TokMem: One-Token Procedural Memory for Large Language Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Wu, Zijun, Hao, Yongchang, Mou, Lili
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Wu, Zijun
Hao, Yongchang
Mou, Lili
author_facet Wu, Zijun
Hao, Yongchang
Mou, Lili
contents Large language models are typically controlled via prompts, which must be repeatedly re-processed for every new query and are difficult to reuse modularly. We introduce TokMem, a procedural memory framework that compiles each reusable task procedure into a single trainable memory token. Each token serves as both a procedure index and a generation control signal that steers generation, enabling targeted behaviors with constant-size overhead. TokMem keeps the backbone LLM frozen and stores procedural knowledge entirely in these dedicated units, so new procedures can be added continually without interfering with existing ones. We evaluate TokMem on two settings: atomic recall over 1,000 Super-Natural Instructions tasks and compositional recall on multi-step function-calling. Our results show that TokMem consistently outperforms retrieval-augmented prompting while avoiding repeated context overhead. Moreover, it matches or exceeds parameter-efficient fine-tuning with substantially fewer trainable parameters.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_00444
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle TokMem: One-Token Procedural Memory for Large Language Models
Wu, Zijun
Hao, Yongchang
Mou, Lili
Computation and Language
Large language models are typically controlled via prompts, which must be repeatedly re-processed for every new query and are difficult to reuse modularly. We introduce TokMem, a procedural memory framework that compiles each reusable task procedure into a single trainable memory token. Each token serves as both a procedure index and a generation control signal that steers generation, enabling targeted behaviors with constant-size overhead. TokMem keeps the backbone LLM frozen and stores procedural knowledge entirely in these dedicated units, so new procedures can be added continually without interfering with existing ones. We evaluate TokMem on two settings: atomic recall over 1,000 Super-Natural Instructions tasks and compositional recall on multi-step function-calling. Our results show that TokMem consistently outperforms retrieval-augmented prompting while avoiding repeated context overhead. Moreover, it matches or exceeds parameter-efficient fine-tuning with substantially fewer trainable parameters.
title TokMem: One-Token Procedural Memory for Large Language Models
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.00444