mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Zep: A Temporal Knowledge Graph Architecture for Agent Memory

arXiv 2501.13956 ↗First posted 20 Jan 2025cs.CL cs.AI cs.IRcited by 372

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Agent memory systems

Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce Zep, a novel memory layer service for AI agents that outperforms the current state-of-the-art system, MemGPT, in the Deep Memory Retrieval (DMR) benchmark. Additionally, Zep excels in more comprehensive and challenging evaluations than DMR that better reflect real-world enterprise use cases. While existing retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) frameworks for large language model (LLM)-based agents are limited to static document retrieval, enterprise applications demand dynamic knowledge integration from diverse sources including ongoing conversations and business data. Zep addresses this fundamental limitation through its core component Graphiti -- a temporally-aware knowledge graph engine that dynamically synthesizes both unstructured conversational data and structured business data while maintaining historical relationships. In the DMR benchmark, which the MemGPT team established as their primary evaluation metric, Zep demonstrates superior performance (94.8% vs 93.4%). Beyond DMR, Zep's capabilities are further validated through the more challenging LongMemEval benchmark, which better reflects enterprise use cases through complex temporal reasoning tasks. In this evaluation, Zep achieves substantial results with accuracy improvements of up to 18.5% while simultaneously reducing response latency by 90% compared to baseline implementations. These results are particularly pronounced in enterprise-critical tasks such as cross-session information synthesis and long-term context maintenance, demonstrating Zep's effectiveness for deployment in real-world applications.

Key facts. Cited by 372 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Agent memory systems, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 7 of its 17 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 20 Jan 2025.

Builds on

7 of 17 references.

Closest ancestors · 1

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2024AriGraph: Learning Knowledge Graph World Models with Episodic Memory for LLM Agents5 Jul

Other references · 6

  1. 2021BEIR: A Heterogenous Benchmark for Zero-shot Evaluation of Information Retrieval Modelscited by 1,225
  2. 2018From Louvain to Leiden: guaranteeing well-connected communitiescited by 379
  3. 2021Beyond Goldfish Memory: Long-Term Open-Domain Conversationcited by 266
  4. 2023FinanceBench: A New Benchmark for Financial Question Answeringcited by 261
  5. 2024GraphReader: Building Graph-based Agent to Enhance Long-Context Abilities of Large Language Modelscited by 42
  6. 2024HiQA: A Hierarchical Contextual Augmentation RAG for Multi-Documents QAcited by 5

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 43; 2026: 329.

372 papers.

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  1. 2025Mem0: Building Production-Ready AI Agents with Scalable Long-Term Memorycited by 722
  2. 2025Memory in the Age of AI Agentscited by 285
  3. 2025Evaluating Memory in LLM Agents via Incremental Multi-Turn Interactionscited by 236
  4. 2025Memory-R1: Enhancing Large Language Model Agents to Manage and Utilize Memories via Reinforcement Learningcited by 220
  5. 2025The Landscape of Agentic Reinforcement Learning for LLMs: A Surveycited by 195
  6. 2025LightMem: Lightweight and Efficient Memory-Augmented Generationcited by 163
  7. 2025MIRIX: Multi-Agent Memory System for LLM-Based Agentscited by 160
  8. 2026SimpleMem: Efficient Lifelong Memory for LLM Agentscited by 140
  9. 2025MemOS: A Memory OS for AI Systemcited by 129
  10. 2025Evo-Memory: Benchmarking LLM Agent Test-time Learning with Self-Evolving Memorycited by 129
  11. 2026OpenClaw-RL: Train Any Agent Simply by Talkingcited by 83
  12. 2025MemEvolve: Meta-Evolution of Agent Memory Systemscited by 81
38 more
  1. 2026Agentic Memory: Learning Unified Long-Term and Short-Term Memory Management for Large Language Model Agentscited by 72
  2. 2026EverMemOS: A Self-Organizing Memory Operating System for Structured Long-Horizon Reasoningcited by 52
  3. 2025LLM-based Agents Suffer from Hallucinations: A Survey of Taxonomy, Methods, and Directionscited by 49
  4. 2025Mem-α: Learning Memory Construction via Reinforcement Learningcited by 49
  5. 2026MAGMA: A Multi-Graph based Agentic Memory Architecture for AI Agentscited by 49
  6. 2026A Survey of Agentic Reasoning for Large Language Models: Towards Recursively Self-Improving and Collective Agentscited by 47
  7. 2025What Deserves Memory: Adaptive Memory Distillation for LLM Agentscited by 46
  8. 2025Hindsight is 20/20: Building Agent Memory that Retains, Recalls, and Reflectscited by 40
  9. 2026A Survey of Agent Memory in the Second Half: Towards Self-Evolving and Long-Horizon Agentscited by 40
  10. 2025LEGOMem: Modular Procedural Memory for Multi-agent LLM Systems for Workflow Automationcited by 39
  11. 2025Rethinking Memory in LLM based Agents: Representations, Operations, and Emerging Topicscited by 36
  12. 2025MemVerse: Multimodal Memory for Lifelong Learning Agentscited by 31
  13. 2025O-Mem: Omni Memory System for Personalized, Long Horizon, Self-Evolving Agentscited by 30
  14. 2025From Single to Multi-Granularity: Toward Long-Term Memory Association and Selection of Conversational Agentscited by 27
  15. 2025MemSearcher: Training LLMs to Reason, Search and Manage Memory via End-to-End Reinforcement Learningcited by 26
  16. 2026TiMem: Temporal-Hierarchical Memory Consolidation for Long-Horizon Conversational Agentscited by 26
  17. 2025Graphs Meet AI Agents: Taxonomy, Progress, and Future Opportunitiescited by 23
  18. 2026Graph-based Agent Memory: Taxonomy, Techniques, and Applicationscited by 22
  19. 2025LLM-empowered knowledge graph construction: A surveycited by 20
  20. 2026Beyond Static Summarization: Proactive Memory Extraction for LLM Agentscited by 20
  21. 2026RealMem: Benchmarking LLMs in Real-World Memory-Driven Interactioncited by 20
  22. 2026REMem: Reasoning with Episodic Memory in Language Agentcited by 20
  23. 2026Anatomy of Agentic Memory: Taxonomy and Empirical Analysis of Evaluation and System Limitationscited by 20
  24. 2025Adaptation of Agentic AI: A Survey of Post-Training, Memory, and Skillscited by 19
  25. 2026GAM: Hierarchical Graph-based Agentic Memory for LLM Agentscited by 19
  26. 2026From Storage to Experience: A Survey on the Evolution of LLM Agent Memory Mechanismscited by 19
  27. 2025A Simple Yet Strong Baseline for Long-Term Conversational Memory of LLM Agentscited by 18
  28. 2025MemR3: Memory Retrieval via Reflective Reasoning for LLM Agentscited by 17
  29. 2026Memory Matters More: Event-Centric Memory as a Logic Map for Agent Searching and Reasoningcited by 17
  30. 2026Locomo-Plus: Beyond-Factual Cognitive Memory Evaluation Framework for LLM Agentscited by 17
  31. 2026Self-Improvements in Modern Agentic Systems: A Surveycited by 17
  32. 2026Learning to Continually Learn via Meta-learning Agentic Memory Designscited by 16
  33. 2026Governing Evolving Memory in LLM Agents: Risks, Mechanisms, and the Stability and Safety Governed Memory (SSGM) Frameworkcited by 16
  34. 2026APEX-MEM: Agentic Semi-Structured Memory with Temporal Reasoning for Long-Term Conversational AIcited by 16
  35. 2025Position: Privacy Is Not Just Memorization!cited by 15
  36. 2026MemRec: Collaborative Memory-Augmented Agentic Recommender Systemcited by 15
  37. 2026Beyond RAG for Agent Memory: Retrieval by Decoupling and Aggregationcited by 15
  38. 2025The Future is Agentic: Definitions, Perspectives, and Open Challenges of Multi-Agent Recommender Systemscited by 14

50 most cited of 372 All 372 (JSON)

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  1. 2025A-MEM: Agentic Memory for LLM Agents
  2. 2025LiCoMemory: Lightweight and Cognitive Agentic Memory for Efficient Long-Term Reasoning
  3. 2026PlugMem: A Task-Agnostic Plugin Memory Module for LLM Agents
  4. 2025PersonalAI: A Systematic Comparison of Knowledge Graph Storage and Retrieval Approaches for Personalized LLM agents
  5. 2025Decentralizing AI Memory: SHIMI, a Semantic Hierarchical Memory Index for Scalable Agent Reasoning
  6. 2026GAAMA: Graph Augmented Associative Memory for Agents
  7. 2026MemGraphRAG: Memory-based Multi-Agent System for Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation
  8. 2025Hierarchical Memory for High-Efficiency Long-Term Reasoning in LLM Agents