# SwiftMem: Fast Agentic Memory via Query-aware Indexing

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.08160 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.08160/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Agent memory systems, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 21 of its 32 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Jan 2026.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Agent memory systems](https://mlsanity.com/agents/agent-memory-systems/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 21 of 21)

- [Efficient and robust approximate nearest neighbor search using Hierarchical Navigable Small World graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.09320/) (2016)
- [Evaluating Very Long-Term Conversational Memory of LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17753/) (2024)
- [Mem0: Building Production-Ready AI Agents with Scalable Long-Term Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.19413/) (2025)
- [LongMemEval: Benchmarking Chat Assistants on Long-Term Interactive Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.10813/) (2024)
- [MemoryBank: Enhancing Large Language Models with Long-Term Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10250/) (2023)
- [Zep: A Temporal Knowledge Graph Architecture for Agent Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13956/) (2025)
- [MIRIX: Multi-Agent Memory System for LLM-Based Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.07957/) (2025)
- [SimpleMem: Efficient Lifelong Memory for LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.02553/) (2026)
- [G-Memory: Tracing Hierarchical Memory for Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.07398/) (2025)
- [MemoRAG: Boosting Long Context Processing with Global Memory-Enhanced Retrieval Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.05591/) (2024)
- [MemGen: Weaving Generative Latent Memory for Self-Evolving Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.24704/) (2025)
- [AgentFold: Long-Horizon Web Agents with Proactive Context Management](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.24699/) (2025)
- [AgentEvolver: Towards Efficient Self-Evolving Agent System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.10395/) (2025)
- [MemOS: An Operating System for Memory-Augmented Generation (MAG) in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22101/) (2025)
- [EverMemOS: A Self-Organizing Memory Operating System for Structured Long-Horizon Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.02163/) (2026)
- [ATLaS: Agent Tuning via Learning Critical Steps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.02197/) (2025)
- [MemTool: Optimizing Short-Term Memory Management for Dynamic Tool Calling in LLM Agent Multi-Turn Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.21428/) (2025)
- [It's High Time: A Survey of Temporal Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20243/) (2025)
- [Membox: Weaving Topic Continuity into Long-Range Memory for LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.03785/) (2026)
- [AeonG: An Efficient Built-in Temporal Support in Graph Databases](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.12212/) (2023)
- [LoopServe: An Adaptive Dual-phase LLM Inference Acceleration System for Multi-Turn Dialogues](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.13681/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Mitigating Provenance-Role Collapse in Long-Term Agents via Typed Memory Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.25869/) (2026)
- [Mnemon: Raw Records, Fast Judgments, Slow Thoughts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.36059/) (2026)
- [Exploring Cross-Scenario Generality of Agentic Memory Systems: Diagnostics and a Strong Baseline](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.04315/) (2026)
- [Harness the Memory: A Holistic Evaluation of Memory Substrates in Memory Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.15008/) (2026)
- [Fresh at Decision, Stale at Action: Routing New Information to LLM Decisions Already Made](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.18126/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Agentic memory systems have become critical for enabling LLM agents to maintain long-term context and retrieve relevant information efficiently. However, existing memory frameworks often perform query-agnostic retrieval over the full memory embedding space even when their storage layer is backed by efficient vector indexes such as HNSW. This full-scope retrieval path creates latency bottlenecks as memory grows, hindering real-time agent interactions. We propose SwiftMem, a query-aware agentic memory system that narrows retrieval to query-relevant memory subsets through specialized indexing over temporal and semantic dimensions. Our temporal index enables logarithmic-time range queries for time-sensitive retrieval, while the semantic DAG-Tag index maps queries to relevant topics through hierarchical tag structures. To address memory fragmentation during growth, we introduce an embedding-tag co-consolidation mechanism that reorganizes storage based on semantic clusters to improve locality. Across LoCoMo and LongMemEvalS, SwiftMem reaches 10.8/12.7 ms search latency while maintaining competitive LLM-judge accuracy against strong HNSW-backed memory systems. On the calibrated benchmark, LoCoMo Refined, SwiftMem remains close to the top LLM-judge score while preserving an order-of-magnitude latency advantage.