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AutoMem: Automated Learning of Memory as a Cognitive Skill

Shengguang Wu, Hao Zhu, Yuhui Zhang, Xiaohan Wang, Serena Yeung-Levy · Jul 1, 2026 · Citations: 0

Long Horizon
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How to use this page

Low trust

Use this as background context only. Do not make protocol decisions from this page alone.

Best use

Background context only

What to verify

Read the full paper before copying any benchmark, metric, or protocol choices.

Evidence quality

Low

Derived from extracted protocol signals and abstract evidence.

Abstract

Memory expertise is a learned skill: knowing what to encode, when to retrieve, and how to organize knowledge--a capacity known in cognitive science as metamemory. We bring this perspective to LLMs by treating memory management as a trainable skill. We promote file-system operations to first-class memory actions alongside task actions, letting the model itself decide how to manage its memory. This memory skill improves along two axes: the structure that supports it (prompts, file schemas, action vocabulary), and the proficiency of the model exercising it. Both axes resist manual optimization: episodes in long-horizon tasks run for thousands of steps, and a single memory mistake can hide long before it surfaces, making human review of full trajectories impractical. We introduce AutoMem, a framework that automates both axes. In the first loop, a strong LLM reviews complete agent trajectories and iteratively revises the memory structure that shapes how the agent interacts with its memory files. In the second loop, the agent's own good memory decisions are identified from many episodes and used as training signal to sharpen the model's memory proficiency directly. Across three procedurally generated long-horizon games (Crafter, MiniHack, and NetHack), optimizing memory alone--without modifying the model's task-action behavior--improved the base agent's performance ~2x-4x, bringing a 32B open-weight model competitive with frontier systems such as Claude Opus 4.5 and Gemini 3.1 Pro Thinking. Our results show that memory management is an independently learnable skill, and a high-leverage objective yielding large gains on long-horizon tasks.

Abstract-only analysis — low confidence

All signals on this page are inferred from the abstract only and may be inaccurate. Do not use this page as a primary protocol reference.

  • This paper looks adjacent to evaluation work, but not like a strong protocol reference.
  • The available metadata is too thin to trust this as a primary source.
  • The abstract does not clearly name benchmarks or metrics.
Human Eval Hub LLM-as-Judge Hub Pairwise Preference Hub

Should You Rely On This Paper?

This paper is adjacent to HFEPX scope and is best used for background context, not as a primary protocol reference.

Best use

Background context only

Use if you need

A secondary eval reference to pair with stronger protocol papers.

Main weakness

This paper looks adjacent to evaluation work, but not like a strong protocol reference.

Trust level

Low

Usefulness score

0/100 • Low

Treat as adjacent context, not a core eval-method reference.

Human Feedback Signal

Not explicit in abstract metadata

Evaluation Signal

Detected

Usefulness for eval research

Adjacent candidate

Extraction confidence 15%

If you are doing eval pipeline work, start here:

Human Eval Hub LLM-as-Judge Hub Pairwise Preference Hub Tool-Use Eval Hub

What We Could Verify

These are the protocol signals we could actually recover from the available paper metadata. Use them to decide whether this paper is worth deeper reading.

Human Feedback Types

missing

None explicit

No explicit feedback protocol extracted.

"Memory expertise is a learned skill: knowing what to encode, when to retrieve, and how to organize knowledge--a capacity known in cognitive science as metamemory."

Evaluation Modes

missing

None explicit

Validate eval design from full paper text.

"Memory expertise is a learned skill: knowing what to encode, when to retrieve, and how to organize knowledge--a capacity known in cognitive science as metamemory."

Quality Controls

missing

Not reported

No explicit QC controls found.

"Memory expertise is a learned skill: knowing what to encode, when to retrieve, and how to organize knowledge--a capacity known in cognitive science as metamemory."

Benchmarks / Datasets

missing

Not extracted

No benchmark anchors detected.

"Memory expertise is a learned skill: knowing what to encode, when to retrieve, and how to organize knowledge--a capacity known in cognitive science as metamemory."

Reported Metrics

missing

Not extracted

No metric anchors detected.

"Memory expertise is a learned skill: knowing what to encode, when to retrieve, and how to organize knowledge--a capacity known in cognitive science as metamemory."

Rater Population

partial

Domain Experts

Helpful for staffing comparability.

"Memory expertise is a learned skill: knowing what to encode, when to retrieve, and how to organize knowledge--a capacity known in cognitive science as metamemory."

Human Feedback Details

  • Uses human feedback: No
  • Feedback types: None
  • Rater population: Domain Experts
  • Unit of annotation: Trajectory (inferred)
  • Expertise required: General

Evaluation Details

  • Evaluation modes:
  • Agentic eval: Long Horizon
  • Quality controls: Not reported
  • Evidence quality: Low
  • Use this page as: Background context only

Protocol And Measurement Signals

Benchmarks / Datasets

No benchmark or dataset names were extracted from the available abstract.

Reported Metrics

No metric terms were extracted from the available abstract.

Research Brief

Metadata summary

Memory expertise is a learned skill: knowing what to encode, when to retrieve, and how to organize knowledge--a capacity known in cognitive science as metamemory.

Based on abstract + metadata only. Check the source paper before making high-confidence protocol decisions.

Key Takeaways

  • Memory expertise is a learned skill: knowing what to encode, when to retrieve, and how to organize knowledge--a capacity known in cognitive science as metamemory.
  • We bring this perspective to LLMs by treating memory management as a trainable skill.
  • We promote file-system operations to first-class memory actions alongside task actions, letting the model itself decide how to manage its memory.

Researcher Actions

  • Compare this paper against nearby papers in the same arXiv category before using it for protocol decisions.
  • Validate inferred eval signals (Long-horizon tasks) against the full paper.
  • Use related-paper links to find stronger protocol-specific references.

Caveats

  • Generated from abstract + metadata only; no PDF parsing.
  • Signals below are heuristic and may miss details reported outside the abstract.

Recommended Queries

Research Summary

Contribution Summary

  • Both axes resist manual optimization: episodes in long-horizon tasks run for thousands of steps, and a single memory mistake can hide long before it surfaces, making human review of full trajectories impractical.
  • We introduce AutoMem, a framework that automates both axes.
  • In the first loop, a strong LLM reviews complete agent trajectories and iteratively revises the memory structure that shapes how the agent interacts with its memory files.

Why It Matters For Eval

  • Both axes resist manual optimization: episodes in long-horizon tasks run for thousands of steps, and a single memory mistake can hide long before it surfaces, making human review of full trajectories impractical.
  • In the first loop, a strong LLM reviews complete agent trajectories and iteratively revises the memory structure that shapes how the agent interacts with its memory files.

Researcher Checklist

  • Gap: Human feedback protocol is explicit

    No explicit human feedback protocol detected.

  • Gap: Evaluation mode is explicit

    No clear evaluation mode extracted.

  • Gap: Quality control reporting appears

    No calibration/adjudication/IAA control explicitly detected.

  • Gap: Benchmark or dataset anchors are present

    No benchmark/dataset anchor extracted from abstract.

  • Gap: Metric reporting is present

    No metric terms extracted.

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