Memory Architectures: Engineering the Context at Scale

The context window is a budget, not a bucket. How production agents decide what earns a slot — compaction that doesn’t destroy the truth, countermeasures for context rot on long runs, four long-term stores compared by their retrieval paths, and write policies that keep memory from becoming a poisoning target.

Content current as of 2026-09.

Lessons

1. What earns a slot: the context budget
2. Compaction: checkpoint, then summarize
3. Context rot: the slow failure of long runs
4. Long-term stores, compared by retrieval path
5. Write policies: remembering on purpose