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Hauptverfasser: Chao, Hanxiang, Bai, Yihan, Sheng, Rui, Li, Tianle, Sun, Yushi
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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Online-Zugang:https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.06527
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author Chao, Hanxiang
Bai, Yihan
Sheng, Rui
Li, Tianle
Sun, Yushi
author_facet Chao, Hanxiang
Bai, Yihan
Sheng, Rui
Li, Tianle
Sun, Yushi
contents Large Language Model (LLM) agents are increasingly expected to maintain coherent, long-term personalized memory, yet current benchmarks primarily measure static fact retrieval, overlooking the ability to revise stored beliefs when new evidence emerges. We identify a critical and underexplored failure mode, Implicit Conflict: a later observation invalidates an earlier memory without explicit negation, requiring contextual inference and commonsense reasoning to detect. To rigorously evaluate this capability, we introduce STALE, a benchmark of 400 expert-validated conflict scenarios (1,200 evaluation queries across three probing dimensions) spanning over 100 everyday topics with contexts up to 150K tokens. We propose a three-dimensional probing framework that tests State Resolution (detecting that a prior belief is outdated), Premise Resistance (rejecting queries that falsely presuppose a stale state), and Implicit Policy Adaptation (proactively applying updated states in downstream behavior). A systematic evaluation of frontier LLMs and specialized memory frameworks reveals a pervasive gap between retrieving updated evidence and acting on it, with even the best evaluated model achieving only 55.2% overall accuracy. Models often accept outdated assumptions embedded in a user's query, and they struggle to recognize when a change in one aspect of the user's state should invalidate related memories. To establish an initial baseline for state-aware memory, we further present CUPMem, a prototype that strengthens write-time revision through structured state consolidation and propagation-aware search, suggesting that explicit state adjudication is a promising direction for robust agentic memory.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_06527
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle STALE: Can LLM Agents Know When Their Memories Are No Longer Valid?
Chao, Hanxiang
Bai, Yihan
Sheng, Rui
Li, Tianle
Sun, Yushi
Computation and Language
Large Language Model (LLM) agents are increasingly expected to maintain coherent, long-term personalized memory, yet current benchmarks primarily measure static fact retrieval, overlooking the ability to revise stored beliefs when new evidence emerges. We identify a critical and underexplored failure mode, Implicit Conflict: a later observation invalidates an earlier memory without explicit negation, requiring contextual inference and commonsense reasoning to detect. To rigorously evaluate this capability, we introduce STALE, a benchmark of 400 expert-validated conflict scenarios (1,200 evaluation queries across three probing dimensions) spanning over 100 everyday topics with contexts up to 150K tokens. We propose a three-dimensional probing framework that tests State Resolution (detecting that a prior belief is outdated), Premise Resistance (rejecting queries that falsely presuppose a stale state), and Implicit Policy Adaptation (proactively applying updated states in downstream behavior). A systematic evaluation of frontier LLMs and specialized memory frameworks reveals a pervasive gap between retrieving updated evidence and acting on it, with even the best evaluated model achieving only 55.2% overall accuracy. Models often accept outdated assumptions embedded in a user's query, and they struggle to recognize when a change in one aspect of the user's state should invalidate related memories. To establish an initial baseline for state-aware memory, we further present CUPMem, a prototype that strengthens write-time revision through structured state consolidation and propagation-aware search, suggesting that explicit state adjudication is a promising direction for robust agentic memory.
title STALE: Can LLM Agents Know When Their Memories Are No Longer Valid?
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.06527