MEMORY HIERARCHIES FOR CONTEXT

CHAPTER SUMMARY A memory hierarchy gives information a place to go when it leaves the window, instead of being destroyed. The hot tier is the active context, the warm tier holds compressed summaries retrievable in one lookup, and the cold tier holds full transcripts retrieved only on explicit request. Structured note-taking gives the agent exact, external memory in a consistent format that survives compaction and restarts. Offloading replaces bulky data in the window with small pointers and loads detail just in time. The harness moves data down at compaction and with age, and up on demand, following explicit rules that can be reviewed and tuned. KEY TERMS REVIEW Memory hierarchy: levels of storage ordered from small and fast to large and slow. Hot tier: the active context window. Warm tier: compressed summaries retrievable with one lookup. Cold tier: complete transcripts and raw data in long-term storage. External memory: information stored outside the window that the agent can read back. Offloading: moving bulky data to storage and keeping only a pointer in the window. Just-in-time retrieval: loading data only at the moment it is needed.