Your agent's markdown memory directory decays: organization halves retrieval cost but erodes under everything except the strongest management agent

arXiv 2607.26637·high signalXBlueskyLinkedInCopy link

This July 29 paper formalizes the pattern most deployed agents now use — long-term memory as a directory tree of markdown files the agent reads, writes, and reorganizes with generic file tools — and measures it across management, search, and execution roles. Organized stores roughly halve retrieval cost once the material is large, but organization erodes over time for all but the strongest management agent, and critically, no agent measured converted better organization into better answers. The sharpest operational takeaway: changing the tool set alone reshapes the resulting store as strongly as swapping the model, so if your memory directory is degrading, audit which file primitives the agent has before you reach for a bigger model.