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Agent memory as a file format

calpaterson.com

71–80 of 115 posts

Re: Agent memory as a file format

#71

Does anyone else not use memory? I find once there is one poisoned line of text it negatively affects everything else downstream. Instead, I use a temp/ folder with documents and use different files for different agents and models. Then I have to constantly prune and delete the files. Any information that can be extrapolated is just noise which negatively affects the agent. If you have a definition of a database stru…

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Re: Agent memory as a file format

#72

It’s good that a lot of people are trying a lot of things when it comes to agentic memory. Sadly none of it represents a complete solution at this time. But we need the experimentation.

I still dont understand what "agentic memory" is . agents can already call sql / rag and grep through files or whatever. why is "agentic memory" a special thing.

Well, that's just one implementation (the easiest). You may have the harness automatically inject stuff into the ongoing conversation, in which case most of the work is not done by the working agent (though you may still end up using, possibly a smaller model to help with deciding/forming the to-be-injected context).

Re: Agent memory as a file format

#73
The most important thing for a memory system is not only remember and recall or search, it is maintain, that including, merge, forget, update etc. That is how human's work.

I am on linggen.dev , that is the one make daily agent work easier.

Re: Agent memory as a file format

#74

It occurs to me: we have latent embedding giving 'general knowledge' to an LLM. What if we use a 'blank' LLM as well as an agent and train that blank LLM on personal context to query that as memory?

Can an LLM be trained to understand language without remembering anything else from its training data? I thought the intrinsic knowledge and the ability to understand language were tied together.

It would be closer to using an LLM as a RAG for memory, as the reasoning LLM in injected with the return of the 'memory llm' (maybe with a defined number of 'slots' for easy clean up).

Re: Agent memory as a file format

#75
This mirrors my experience:

- Store session turns in an sqlite-vec

- Provide the agent with an mcp to search the vec-db

- Let the agent write notes in md files along with an index / frontmatter

Along with the commit history, the vec-db gives the agent long-term memory. The notes allow the user to correct accumulation of false lessons.

Simpler but better.

Re: Agent memory as a file format

#76
> A memoryfield page looks like this:

    ---
    title: Carbon Fibre Woks
    created: '2026-03-01T09:00:00Z'
    updated: '2026-08-22T14:30:00Z'
    uuid: 6aa615f0-486f-48a7-a210-ba4f5ff18c8b
    summary: Thermal properties of carbon fibre cookware
    ---

    Carbon fibre woks conduct heat evenly, but...

So basically recfiles[1], and an entire suite of tools replaced by fopen and sed. Anyone who doesn't know of recfiles is doomed to reimplement it(poorly).

1. https://www.gnu.org/software/recutils/

Re: Agent memory as a file format

#78

Does anyone else not use memory? I find once there is one poisoned line of text it negatively affects everything else downstream. Instead, I use a temp/ folder with documents and use different files for different agents and models. Then I have to constantly prune and delete the files. Any information that can be extrapolated is just noise which negatively affects the agent. If you have a definition of a database stru…

This is why I created: https://github.com/alisorcorp/warrant

It keeps documentation from going out of date by embedding re-runnable verification checks directly inside markdown files (that the agents use, not humans). I use it with a handoff workflow to force Claude/GPT to re-verify facts before handing off documentation to the next session.

Re: Agent memory as a file format

#79

Does anyone else not use memory? I find once there is one poisoned line of text it negatively affects everything else downstream. Instead, I use a temp/ folder with documents and use different files for different agents and models. Then I have to constantly prune and delete the files. Any information that can be extrapolated is just noise which negatively affects the agent. If you have a definition of a database stru…

I have memory disabled in all my Chat UIs (even though it tends to creep in, looking at you ChatGPT). It’s very helpful until it scales with time, at which point it becomes useless due to staleness or mis-application across contexts.

That being said, in coding over a longer time horizon, having the agent continually re-derive decisions/laws/facts/etc from your code is wasteful of tokens and time, and if your code doesn’t consistently apply them you can’t know the agent will make the correct choices.

You need memory of these important facts to avoid this expense or potential incorrectness. Memory does not itself scale though, without maintenance and pruning, and that has its own impacts on cost and correctness like the Chat memory.

“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t” at least until the agent can itself maintain its memory accurately - or some other non-human effort can achieve that.

Re: Agent memory as a file format

#80

Does anyone else not use memory? I find once there is one poisoned line of text it negatively affects everything else downstream. Instead, I use a temp/ folder with documents and use different files for different agents and models. Then I have to constantly prune and delete the files. Any information that can be extrapolated is just noise which negatively affects the agent. If you have a definition of a database stru…

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