How Agents Remember You: Human Memory Science and a Code Audit of Six Open-Source Systems
·5564 words·
27 min
Almost every agent project now claims to provide “long-term memory.”
For one project, that means embedding chat history. For another, it means maintaining a user profile. A third lets the model edit Markdown files. A fourth builds a bitemporal knowledge graph. All four use the word memory, but they are not the same system and should not be placed on one undifferentiated leaderboard.
To decide whether a system genuinely remembers, I would rather ask three questions: