Memory-Centric Continual Learning for AI Agents proposes a framework that redefines agent memory as a driver of future actions rather than a passive retrieval cache. It introduces a three-axis taxonomy—substrates, assets, and policies—to structure memory, a two-loop lifecycle for updating memory state and refining management policies, and an evaluation protocol that isolates genuine behavioral gains from simple context expansion. The paper also presents a memory scaling framework to model how performance scales with experience, storage, and compute across non-parametric and parametric memory.
By Dongfang Li, Zhuoen Chen, Bonian Jia, Zixuan Liu, Zhengxuan Lu, Can Deng, Yukun Shi, Yuhang Meng, Xin Zhang, Jiahe Huang, Fuhao Li, Junmai Wang, Shunyao Wen, Jingjun Sun, Jiaxu Tian, Jiangling Zhang, Zihan Wang, Liangyou Li, Yitong Yao, Shuangyong Song, Beilun Wang, Pengxu Wei, Hanlin Xu, Chang Liu, Yongxiang Li, Baotian Hu, Xiangyang Ji, Min Zhang
arXiv:2606. 08447v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: One of the critical limitations of artificial neural networks is their lack of ability to continually learn: training on new tasks often leads to interference and forgetting of the previous ones.
By Anthony Bazhenov, Jean Erik Delanois, Giri P. Krishnan
arXiv:2608. 07622v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Long-term memory enables AI agents to maintain continuity across sessions, personalize behavior, and evolve through accumulated experience.
By Ao Ding, Hongzong LI, Shiqin Tang, Li Zhang, Liang Chen, Xuyang Chen, Zi Liang
arXiv:2604. 13085v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Autonomous AI agents operating in dynamic environments face a persistent challenge: acquiring new capabilities without erasing prior knowledge.
By Rajat Khanda, Mohammad Baqar, Sambuddha Chakrabarti, Satyasaran Changdar
arXiv:2608. 19514v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Persistent intelligent systems require the ability to learn continually, but current machine learning approaches face significant challenges in this area compared to biological learning systems.
By Benjamin Smith, Levin Kuhlmann, Kaushik Roy, Gideon Kowadlo
Large Language Model (LLM) agents increasingly rely on external memory systems to accumulate experience across tasks. Yet nearly all existing approaches, from graph-structured memories to reflective insight stores, access memory through fixed, hand-designed heuristics.
Despite the wide deployment of memory in large-model agents, there is no unified formal account of what a memory is or when it is optimal. This paper takes a first step toward this account.
arXiv:2605.12978v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Learning from past experience benefits from two complementary forms of memory: episodic traces -- raw trajectories of what happened -- and consolid...
By Dylan Zhang, Yanshan Lin, Zhengkun Wu, Yihang Sun, Bingxuan Li, Dianqi Li, Hao Peng
arXiv:2608. 11654v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Despite the wide deployment of memory in large-model agents, there is no unified formal account of what a memory is or when it is optimal.
By Hongyao Tang
The paper introduces Harness Continual Learning (HCL), a paradigm where an agent’s state evolves through prompts, memories, tools, skills, and routing rules while keeping the foundation model frozen. HCL defines harness-level forgetting and proposes guarded harness evolution with a Continual Optimizer and Evaluator to balance improvement, retention, and validity. Experiments across textual reasoning, multimodal perception, and open‑world interaction show over 10% performance gains and demonstrate explicit control over the stability–plasticity trade‑off.
arXiv:2602. 06052v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Research in artificial intelligence is shifting from model innovations and benchmark scores towards problem definition and rigorous real-world evaluation.
By Wei-Chieh Huang, Weizhi Zhang, Yueqing Liang, Yuanchen Bei, Yankai Chen, Tao Feng, Xinyu Pan, Zhen Tan, Yu Wang, Tianxin Wei, Shanglin Wu, Ruiyao Xu, Liangwei Yang, Rui Yang, Wooseong Yang, Chin-Yuan Yeh, Hanrong Zhang, Haozhen Zhang, Siqi Zhu, Henry Peng Zou, Wanjia Zhao, Song Wang, Wujiang Xu, Zixuan Ke, Zheng Hui, Dawei Li, Yaozu Wu, Langzhou He, Chen Wang, Xiongxiao Xu, Baixiang Huang, Juntao Tan, Shelby Heinecke, Huan Wang, Caiming Xiong, Ahmed A. Metwally, Jun Yan, Chen-Yu Lee, Hanqing Zeng, Yinglong Xia, Xiaokai Wei, Ali Payani, Yu Wang, Haitong Ma, Wenya Wang, Chenguang Wang, Yu Zhang, Xin Eric Wang, Yongfeng Zhang, Jiaxuan You, Hanghang Tong, Xiao Luo, Xue Liu, Yizhou Sun, Wei Wang, Julian McAuley, James Zou, Jiawei Han, Philip S. Yu, Kai Shu
arXiv:2604.00131v3 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Human memory adapts through selective forgetting: experiences become less accessible over time but can be reactivated by reinforcement or con...
By Ashish Rana, Chia-Chien Hung, Qumeng Sun, Julian Martin Kunkel, Carolin Lawrence