Definition
Plain language
Knowing how to manage your own memory — what's worth writing down, when to double-check something, how to organize notes so you can find them later.
As stated in the literature
A cognitive-science construct for metacognitive control over one's own memory (what to encode, when to retrieve, how to organize); reframed in agent work as a trainable skill rather than a fixed retrieval mechanism.
Why it matters: Treating memory management as a skill rather than fixed machinery lets an agent decide for itself what's worth remembering, improving how it handles long, complex tasks.
For example, a student practicing metamemory decides which lecture points are worth writing down, when to reread a tricky section, and how to file notes so they're easy to find at exam time.
Heard on the show
“Cognitive scientists have a name for it — metamemory.”Episode 192 — A 32B Open Model Matched Frontier Systems By Learning to Take Notes