Working memory is the live transcript: the current goal, the actions taken and their results. It is bounded by the context window and is discarded when the run ends, which is precisely why anything worth keeping has to be written somewhere else deliberately.

Working Memory

Long-term memory is state that outlives a single run, stored externally and retrieved when relevant: user preferences, prior decisions, durable facts about a project. It is not free, because everything written is something the agent may later retrieve at the wrong moment.

Long Term Memory

A topic of the Building AI Agents course. Planned for 2 hours at Medium difficulty.

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

A category of the Building AI Agents course, covering 4 topics.

Memory, Retrieval and Context Engineering

A topic of the Building AI Agents course. Planned for 1.5 hours at Medium difficulty.

The Context Window as a Budget

Retrieval Augmented Generation for Agents

Short Term and Long Term Memory

A topic of the Building AI Agents course. Planned for 1.5 hours at Hard difficulty.

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