Definition
Plain language
What an AI assistant remembers about you across many conversations.
As stated in the literature
Persistent memory storage and retrieval mechanisms that allow LLM agents to retain user-specific facts and procedures across sessions, often via vector databases or structured stores.
Why it matters: It's what turns a chatbot into something that feels like an ongoing assistant rather than starting from zero each session.
For example, telling your assistant once that you're allergic to peanuts and having it remember and apply that fact in a recipe conversation three months later.
Heard on the show
“And there's a subtle detail in the long-term memory file that I want to flag, because it's load-bearing.”Episode 027 — When AI Agents Build the Serving Stack: A Bet on Bespoke Infrastructure