--- schemaVersion: "1.0.0" id: "a-better-home-for-agent-memory" slug: "a-better-home-for-agent-memory" title: "A better home for your agents’ memory" description: "Separate facts, working context, and durable decisions before adding another vector database." category: "Field notes" tags: ["Agents","Memory","Architecture"] date: "2026-09-29" updated: "2026-09-29" author: "PlainNerd editorial" readTime: 3 illustrationKind: "workflow" status: "published" evidenceStatus: "research-plan" locale: "en" originalLocale: "en" --- # A better home for your agents’ memory Research plan\. These experiments have not been run; no measured results are claimed\. ## Memory needs a job description An agent can need several different kinds of information: temporary task context, durable user preferences, source documents, and records of decisions\. Putting everything into one undifferentiated store makes retrieval and correction difficult to reason about\. ## Design a small memory record Our proposed record includes the claim, its source, when it was observed, who may use it, and when it should be reviewed\. Treat inferred preferences as tentative\. A correction should supersede an earlier record rather than silently leaving both active\. - Facts need provenance and an explicit owner\. - Decisions need the context in which they were made\. - Working notes need an expiry or a clear task boundary\. - Sensitive material needs an intentional retention policy\. ## Do not confuse caching with remembering Prompt caching reuses previously processed prompt prefixes when the provider’s cache requirements are met\. It is a different mechanism from deciding which facts should persist across tasks\. Cache hits can reduce repeated processing costs, while cache\-write costs, lifetime, and model support affect the overall saving\. Caching does not make the context accurate or appropriate\. [Anthropic: prompt caching]() ## Test correction, not just recall A useful future experiment would ask an agent to retrieve a fact, incorporate a correction, and stop relying on the earlier value\. Include cases where the right answer is that the source is missing or out of date\. We have not run this evaluation; the record format and test cases are a research proposal\.