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Learning: Memory + State Management

How to Use This Page

  • Start with minimal state, then add memory layers.
  • Verify resumability after each change.
  • Track memory freshness and relevance.

Lesson 1: Fundamentals

Learn session state persistence and restart-safe workflows.

What You Learn

  • How to persist only essential session state
  • Why explicit load/update/save cycles reduce bugs
  • How checkpointing supports crash recovery

Walkthrough

  1. Store a simple conversation state object.
  2. Restart the process and reload state.
  3. Resume execution from the last known step.

Try It Yourself

  • Corrupt one checkpoint intentionally and handle it gracefully.
  • Add a version field to state schema.
  • Validate state before use on each load.

Lesson 2: Intermediate Patterns

Learn summary memory and retrieval memory together.

What You Learn

  • How summaries reduce token usage on long sessions
  • Why retrieval should be relevance-first, not quantity-first
  • How provenance metadata improves trust

Walkthrough

  1. Summarize older turns into compact memory notes.
  2. Retrieve only top relevant notes for the current query.
  3. Include source and timestamp metadata in retrieval results.

Try It Yourself

  • Compare response quality with and without summary memory.
  • Inject stale memory and test staleness filtering.
  • Measure token savings from summary compression.

Lesson 3: Production Patterns

Learn schema evolution, drift control, and memory quality checks.

What You Learn

  • How to handle backward-compatible checkpoint upgrades
  • Why stale memory can silently degrade outcomes
  • Which metrics expose retrieval noise and drift

Walkthrough

  1. Add schema migration logic for old checkpoints.
  2. Apply freshness rules to memory entries.
  3. Monitor retrieval precision proxies over time.

Try It Yourself

  • Create two schema versions and test migration behavior.
  • Define a freshness cutoff and evaluate answer quality impact.
  • Draft a memory conflict policy for contradictory entries.

Code Examples

  • Starter script: docs/starter/stage04_memory_state.py
  • Stage architecture notes: docs/roadmap/stage-04-memory-state-checkpointing/architecture.md