mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

LightMem: Lightweight and Efficient Memory-Augmented Generation

arXiv 2510.18866 ↗First posted 21 Oct 2025cs.CL cs.AI cs.CVcited by 180

Not on the map. Why?

Cited by 113 in LLM agents and tool use, but placed by its own abstract, which didn’t fit.

Abstract (arXiv)

Despite their remarkable capabilities, Large Language Models (LLMs) struggle to effectively leverage historical interaction information in dynamic and complex environments. Memory systems enable LLMs to move beyond stateless interactions by introducing persistent information storage, retrieval, and utilization mechanisms. However, existing memory systems often introduce substantial time and computational overhead. To this end, we introduce a new memory system called LightMem, which strikes a balance between the performance and efficiency of memory systems. Inspired by the Atkinson-Shiffrin model of human memory, LightMem organizes memory into three complementary stages. First, cognition-inspired sensory memory rapidly filters irrelevant information through lightweight compression and groups information according to their topics. Next, topic-aware short-term memory consolidates these topic-based groups, organizing and summarizing content for more structured access. Finally, long-term memory with sleep-time update employs an offline procedure that decouples consolidation from online inference. On LongMemEval and LoCoMo, using GPT and Qwen backbones, LightMem consistently surpasses strong baselines, improving QA accuracy by up to 7.7% / 29.3%, reducing total token usage by up to 38x / 20.9x and API calls by up to 30x / 55.5x, while purely online test-time costs are even lower, achieving up to 106x / 117x token reduction and 159x / 310x fewer API calls. The code is available at https://github.com/zjunlp/LightMem.

Key facts. Cited by 180 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 46 of its 52 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 21 Oct 2025.

Builds on

46 of 52 references.

References · 46

  1. 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,396
  2. 2020Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Taskscited by 9,297
  3. 2023Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behaviorcited by 3,568
  4. 2023Lost in the Middle: How Language Models Use Long Contextscited by 3,455
  5. 2023Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Large Language Models: A Surveycited by 2,212
  6. 2024From Local to Global: A Graph RAG Approach to Query-Focused Summarizationcited by 1,453
  7. 2023MemGPT: Towards LLMs as Operating Systemscited by 1,389
  8. 2025A-MEM: Agentic Memory for LLM Agentscited by 1,063
  9. 2024Evaluating Very Long-Term Conversational Memory of LLM Agentscited by 830
  10. 2025Mem0: Building Production-Ready AI Agents with Scalable Long-Term Memorycited by 779
  11. 2024LongMemEval: Benchmarking Chat Assistants on Long-Term Interactive Memorycited by 707
  12. 2024A Survey on the Memory Mechanism of Large Language Model based Agentscited by 634
34 more
  1. 2023MemoryBank: Enhancing Large Language Models with Long-Term Memorycited by 556
  2. 2024RAPTOR: Recursive Abstractive Processing for Tree-Organized Retrievalcited by 532
  3. 2023LongLLMLingua: Accelerating and Enhancing LLMs in Long Context Scenarios via Prompt Compressioncited by 453
  4. 2025Zep: A Temporal Knowledge Graph Architecture for Agent Memorycited by 400
  5. 2024LLMLingua-2: Data Distillation for Efficient and Faithful Task-Agnostic Prompt Compressioncited by 348
  6. 2022Selection-Inference: Exploiting Large Language Models for Interpretable Logical Reasoningcited by 334
  7. 2024Titans: Learning to Memorize at Test Timecited by 328
  8. 2024LightRAG: Simple and Fast Retrieval-Augmented Generationcited by 315
  9. 2025Evaluating Memory in LLM Agents via Incremental Multi-Turn Interactionscited by 254
  10. 2025TokenSkip: Controllable Chain-of-Thought Compression in LLMscited by 249
  11. 2023Compressing Context to Enhance Inference Efficiency of Large Language Modelscited by 189
  12. 2025MIRIX: Multi-Agent Memory System for LLM-Based Agentscited by 173
  13. 2025Memory OS of AI Agentcited by 150
  14. 2025Advances and Challenges in Foundation Agents: From Brain-Inspired Intelligence to Evolutionary, Collaborative, and Safe Systemscited by 126
  15. 2025A Survey of Context Engineering for Large Language Modelscited by 126
  16. 2024Hello Again! LLM-powered Personalized Agent for Long-term Dialoguecited by 123
  17. 2025G-Memory: Tracing Hierarchical Memory for Multi-Agent Systemscited by 122
  18. 2025On Memory Construction and Retrieval for Personalized Conversational Agentscited by 105
  19. 2023SCM: Enhancing Large Language Model with Self-Controlled Memory Frameworkcited by 98
  20. 2023System 2 Attention (is something you might need too)cited by 89
  21. 2025MemInsight: Autonomous Memory Augmentation for LLM Agentscited by 85
  22. 2024From Isolated Conversations to Hierarchical Schemas: Dynamic Tree Memory Representation for LLMscited by 79
  23. 2025MemOS: An Operating System for Memory-Augmented Generation (MAG) in Large Language Modelscited by 73
  24. 2024Prompt Compression for Large Language Models: A Surveycited by 67
  25. 2024Learning to Compress Prompt in Natural Language Formatscited by 55
  26. 2024Prompt Compression with Context-Aware Sentence Encoding for Fast and Improved LLM Inferencecited by 53
  27. 2025What Deserves Memory: Adaptive Memory Distillation for LLM Agentscited by 48
  28. 2024Is Semantic Chunking Worth the Computational Cost?cited by 43
  29. 2024Memory3: Language Modeling with Explicit Memorycited by 40
  30. 2024LumberChunker: Long-Form Narrative Document Segmentationcited by 36
  31. 2025Youtu-GraphRAG: Vertically Unified Agents for Graph Retrieval-Augmented Complex Reasoningcited by 22
  32. 2024Meta-Chunking: Learning Text Segmentation and Semantic Completion via Logical Perceptioncited by 17
  33. 2024Towards LifeSpan Cognitive Systemscited by 13
  34. 2025Passage Segmentation of Documents for Extractive Question Answeringcited by 6

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 8; 2026: 172.

180 papers.

Sort:

By area:

  1. 2025Memory in the Age of AI Agentscited by 303
  2. 2026SimpleMem: Efficient Lifelong Memory for LLM Agentscited by 149
  3. 2026Mem-Gallery: Benchmarking Multimodal Long-Term Conversational Memory for MLLM Agentscited by 54
  4. 2026A Survey of Agentic Reasoning for Large Language Models: Towards Recursively Self-Improving and Collective Agentscited by 50
  5. 2025General Agentic Memory Via Deep Researchcited by 47
  6. 2026A Survey of Agent Memory in the Second Half: Towards Self-Evolving and Long-Horizon Agentscited by 44
  7. 2026Harness Updating Is Not Harness Benefit: Disentangling Evolution Capabilities in Self-Evolving LLM Agentscited by 34
  8. 2026Graph-based Agent Memory: Taxonomy, Techniques, and Applicationscited by 25
  9. 2025A Simple Yet Strong Baseline for Long-Term Conversational Memory of LLM Agentscited by 21
  10. 2026Beyond Static Summarization: Proactive Memory Extraction for LLM Agentscited by 21
  11. 2026Anatomy of Agentic Memory: Taxonomy and Empirical Analysis of Evaluation and System Limitationscited by 21
  12. 2026From Storage to Experience: A Survey on the Evolution of LLM Agent Memory Mechanismscited by 21
38 more
  1. 2026RealMem: Benchmarking LLMs in Real-World Memory-Driven Interactioncited by 20
  2. 2025MemR3: Memory Retrieval via Reflective Reasoning for LLM Agentscited by 19
  3. 2026Beyond RAG for Agent Memory: Retrieval by Decoupling and Aggregationcited by 19
  4. 2026Mem-T: Densifying Rewards for Long-Horizon Memory Agentscited by 18
  5. 2026Memory Matters More: Event-Centric Memory as a Logic Map for Agent Searching and Reasoningcited by 17
  6. 2026Experience Compression Spectrum: Unifying Memory, Skills, and Rules in LLM Agentscited by 17
  7. 2026Toward Efficient Agents: Memory, Tool learning, and Planningcited by 16
  8. 2026MemOCR: Layout-Aware Visual Memory for Efficient Long-Horizon Reasoningcited by 15
  9. 2025TeleMem: Building Long-Term and Multimodal Memory for Agentic AIcited by 14
  10. 2026Beyond Dialogue Time: Temporal Semantic Memory for Personalized LLM Agentscited by 14
  11. 2026Toward Personalized LLM-Powered Agents: Foundations, Evaluation, and Future Directionscited by 14
  12. 2026PERMA: Benchmarking Personalized Memory Agents via Event-Driven Preference and Realistic Task Environmentscited by 14
  13. 2026HyperMem: Hypergraph Memory for Long-Term Conversationscited by 14
  14. 2026Jev-Mem: System-One-Controlled Agentic Memory for Efficient AI Agentscited by 14
  15. 2025Agentic Learner with Grow-and-Refine Multimodal Semantic Memorycited by 13
  16. 2026Learning Query-Aware Budget-Tier Routing for Runtime Agent Memorycited by 13
  17. 2025AI Meets Brain: Memory Systems from Cognitive Neuroscience to Autonomous Agentscited by 12
  18. 2026Evaluating Memory Structure in LLM Agentscited by 12
  19. 2026MemMA: Coordinating the Memory Cycle through Multi-Agent Reasoning and In-Situ Self-Evolutioncited by 12
  20. 2026MemSyco-Bench: Benchmarking Sycophancy in Agent Memorycited by 12
  21. 2026Choosing How to Remember: Adaptive Memory Structures for LLM Agentscited by 11
  22. 2026Does Memory Need Graphs? A Unified Framework and Empirical Analysis for Long-Term Dialog Memorycited by 10
  23. 2026E-mem: Multi-agent based Episodic Context Reconstruction for LLM Agent Memorycited by 10
  24. 2026Auto-Dreamer: Learning Offline Memory Consolidation for Language Agentscited by 10
  25. 2026SAM: State-Adaptive Memory for Long-Horizon Reasoning Agentcited by 10
  26. 2026Memory is Reconstructed, Not Retrieved: Graph Memory for LLM Agentscited by 10
  27. 2026All-Mem: Agentic Lifelong Memory via Dynamic Topology Evolutioncited by 9
  28. 2026Fine-Mem: Fine-Grained Feedback Alignment for Long-Horizon Memory Managementcited by 8
  29. 2026MetaMem: Evolving Meta-Memory for Knowledge Utilization through Self-Reflective Symbolic Optimizationcited by 7
  30. 2026MemRefine: LLM-Guided Compression for Long-Term Agent Memorycited by 7
  31. 2026User as Code: Executable Memory for Personalized Agentscited by 7
  32. 2026Query-focused and Memory-aware Reranker for Long Context Processingcited by 6
  33. 2026ActMem: Bridging the Gap Between Memory Retrieval and Reasoning in LLM Agentscited by 6
  34. 2026Self-Evolving Multi-Agent Systems via Decentralized Memorycited by 6
  35. 2026MemTrace: Tracing and Attributing Errors in Large Language Model Memory Systemscited by 6
  36. 2026EMBER: Efficient Memory via Budgeted Evidence Retention for Long-Horizon Agentscited by 6
  37. 2026Infini Memory: Maintainable Topic Documents for Long-Term LLM Agent Memorycited by 6
  38. 2026From Chatbot to Digital Colleague: The Paradigm Shift Toward Persistent Autonomous AIcited by 6

50 most cited of 180 All 180 (JSON)

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026Lightweight LLM Agent Memory with Small Language Models
  2. 2026Reproducing LightMem: Naive RAG Is Just as Good for Memory Management ↗
  3. 2026LightThinker++: From Reasoning Compression to Memory Management
  4. 2026RecMem: Recurrence-based Memory Consolidation for Efficient and Effective Long-Running LLM Agents
  5. 2026TransMem: Transforming Hidden States into Memory for Large Language Models
  6. 2026TokenMem: Faithful Knowledge Injection for Frozen LLMs
  7. 2025MMAG: Mixed Memory-Augmented Generation for Large Language Models Applications
  8. 2026Chain-of-Memory: Lightweight Memory Construction with Dynamic Evolution for LLM Agents