Research Agents
Memory and Context Management in Long Research Sessions
Memory systems fail not because context windows are small, but because models lose signal in noise.
Maya Okafor
Editor at Large · · 10 min read
Memory systems fail not because context windows are small, but because models lose signal in noise.
Research agents need to verify sources before trusting them, not after confidently citing them.
Research agents need loops, not one-shot retrieval, to handle ambiguous questions and live data.
Research agents dig deeper but cost more; answer engines are fast and cheap.
How agentic design patterns break down when your agent's tools hit live web data.
Prioritized queues, domain affinity, and deduplication keep crawlers fast and polite at scale.