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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2026
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.06052 |
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| _version_ | 1866917262476181504 |
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| author | Huang, Wei-Chieh Zhang, Weizhi Liang, Yueqing Bei, Yuanchen Chen, Yankai Feng, Tao Pan, Xinyu Tan, Zhen Wang, Yu Wei, Tianxin Wu, Shanglin Xu, Ruiyao Yang, Liangwei Yang, Rui Yang, Wooseong Yeh, Chin-Yuan Zhang, Hanrong Zhang, Haozhen Zhu, Siqi Zou, Henry Peng Zhao, Wanjia Wang, Song Xu, Wujiang Ke, Zixuan Hui, Zheng Li, Dawei Wu, Yaozu He, Langzhou Wang, Chen Xu, Xiongxiao Huang, Baixiang Tan, Juntao Heinecke, Shelby Wang, Huan Xiong, Caiming Metwally, Ahmed A. Yan, Jun Lee, Chen-Yu Zeng, Hanqing Xia, Yinglong Wei, Xiaokai Payani, Ali Wang, Yu Ma, Haitong Wang, Wenya Wang, Chenguang Zhang, Yu Wang, Xin Zhang, Yongfeng You, Jiaxuan Tong, Hanghang Luo, Xiao Liu, Xue Sun, Yizhou Wang, Wei McAuley, Julian Zou, James Han, Jiawei Yu, Philip S. Shu, Kai |
| author_facet | Huang, Wei-Chieh Zhang, Weizhi Liang, Yueqing Bei, Yuanchen Chen, Yankai Feng, Tao Pan, Xinyu Tan, Zhen Wang, Yu Wei, Tianxin Wu, Shanglin Xu, Ruiyao Yang, Liangwei Yang, Rui Yang, Wooseong Yeh, Chin-Yuan Zhang, Hanrong Zhang, Haozhen Zhu, Siqi Zou, Henry Peng Zhao, Wanjia Wang, Song Xu, Wujiang Ke, Zixuan Hui, Zheng Li, Dawei Wu, Yaozu He, Langzhou Wang, Chen Xu, Xiongxiao Huang, Baixiang Tan, Juntao Heinecke, Shelby Wang, Huan Xiong, Caiming Metwally, Ahmed A. Yan, Jun Lee, Chen-Yu Zeng, Hanqing Xia, Yinglong Wei, Xiaokai Payani, Ali Wang, Yu Ma, Haitong Wang, Wenya Wang, Chenguang Zhang, Yu Wang, Xin Zhang, Yongfeng You, Jiaxuan Tong, Hanghang Luo, Xiao Liu, Xue Sun, Yizhou Wang, Wei McAuley, Julian Zou, James Han, Jiawei Yu, Philip S. Shu, Kai |
| contents | The research of artificial intelligence is undergoing a paradigm shift from prioritizing model innovations over benchmark scores towards emphasizing problem definition and rigorous real-world evaluation. As the field enters the "second half," the central challenge becomes real utility in long-horizon, dynamic, and user-dependent environments, where agents face context explosion and must continuously accumulate, manage, and selectively reuse large volumes of information across extended interactions. Memory, with hundreds of papers released this year, therefore emerges as the critical solution to fill the utility gap. In this survey, we provide a unified view of foundation agent memory along three dimensions: memory substrate (internal and external), cognitive mechanism (episodic, semantic, sensory, working, and procedural), and memory subject (agent- and user-centric). We then analyze how memory is instantiated and operated under different agent topologies and highlight learning policies over memory operations. Finally, we review evaluation benchmarks and metrics for assessing memory utility, and outline various open challenges and future directions. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_06052 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Rethinking Memory Mechanisms of Foundation Agents in the Second Half: A Survey Huang, Wei-Chieh Zhang, Weizhi Liang, Yueqing Bei, Yuanchen Chen, Yankai Feng, Tao Pan, Xinyu Tan, Zhen Wang, Yu Wei, Tianxin Wu, Shanglin Xu, Ruiyao Yang, Liangwei Yang, Rui Yang, Wooseong Yeh, Chin-Yuan Zhang, Hanrong Zhang, Haozhen Zhu, Siqi Zou, Henry Peng Zhao, Wanjia Wang, Song Xu, Wujiang Ke, Zixuan Hui, Zheng Li, Dawei Wu, Yaozu He, Langzhou Wang, Chen Xu, Xiongxiao Huang, Baixiang Tan, Juntao Heinecke, Shelby Wang, Huan Xiong, Caiming Metwally, Ahmed A. Yan, Jun Lee, Chen-Yu Zeng, Hanqing Xia, Yinglong Wei, Xiaokai Payani, Ali Wang, Yu Ma, Haitong Wang, Wenya Wang, Chenguang Zhang, Yu Wang, Xin Zhang, Yongfeng You, Jiaxuan Tong, Hanghang Luo, Xiao Liu, Xue Sun, Yizhou Wang, Wei McAuley, Julian Zou, James Han, Jiawei Yu, Philip S. Shu, Kai Computation and Language Artificial Intelligence The research of artificial intelligence is undergoing a paradigm shift from prioritizing model innovations over benchmark scores towards emphasizing problem definition and rigorous real-world evaluation. As the field enters the "second half," the central challenge becomes real utility in long-horizon, dynamic, and user-dependent environments, where agents face context explosion and must continuously accumulate, manage, and selectively reuse large volumes of information across extended interactions. Memory, with hundreds of papers released this year, therefore emerges as the critical solution to fill the utility gap. In this survey, we provide a unified view of foundation agent memory along three dimensions: memory substrate (internal and external), cognitive mechanism (episodic, semantic, sensory, working, and procedural), and memory subject (agent- and user-centric). We then analyze how memory is instantiated and operated under different agent topologies and highlight learning policies over memory operations. Finally, we review evaluation benchmarks and metrics for assessing memory utility, and outline various open challenges and future directions. |
| title | Rethinking Memory Mechanisms of Foundation Agents in the Second Half: A Survey |
| topic | Computation and Language Artificial Intelligence |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.06052 |