mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Memory-R2: Fair Credit Assignment for Long-Horizon Memory-Augmented LLM Agents

arXiv 2605.21768 ↗First posted 20 May 2026cs.LG cs.MAcited by 9

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

Abstract (arXiv)

Memory-augmented LLM agents enable interactions that extend beyond finite context windows by storing, updating, and reusing information across sessions. However, training such agents with reinforcement learning in multi-session environments is challenging because memory turns the agent's past actions into part of its future environment. Once different rollouts write, update, or delete different memories, they no longer share the same intermediate memory state, making trajectory-level comparisons fundamentally unfair. This violates a key assumption behind group-relative methods such as GRPO, where rollouts are compared as if they were sampled from the same effective environment. Consequently, trajectory-level rewards provide noisy or biased credit signals for long-horizon memory operations. To address this challenge, we introduce Memory-R2, a training framework for long-horizon memory-augmented LLM agents. Its core algorithm, LoGo-GRPO, combines local and global group-relative optimization. The global objective preserves end-to-end learning from long-horizon trajectory-level rewards, while local rerollouts compare different memory-operation outcomes from the same intermediate memory state, yielding fairer group comparisons and more precise supervision for memory construction. Beyond credit assignment, Memory-R2 jointly optimizes memory formation and memory evolution with a shared-parameter co-learning design, where a fact extractor and a memory manager are instantiated from the same LLM backbone through role-specific prompts. To stabilize multi-step RL over long memory horizons, we adopt a progressive curriculum that increases the training horizon from 8 to 16 to 32 sessions. Together, these components provide an effective training paradigm for memory-augmented LLM agents in long-horizon multi-session settings.

Key facts. Cited by 9 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 16 of its 32 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 20 May 2026.

Builds on

16 of 32 references.

Closest ancestors · 7

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Memory in the Age of AI Agents15 Dec
  2. 2025CAM: A Constructivist View of Agentic Memory for LLM-Based Reading Comprehension7 Oct
  3. 2025Memory-R1: Enhancing Large Language Model Agents to Manage and Utilize Memories via Reinforcement Learning27 Aug
  4. 2025MemBench: Towards More Comprehensive Evaluation on the Memory of LLM-based Agents20 Jun
  5. 2025G-Memory: Tracing Hierarchical Memory for Multi-Agent Systems9 Jun
  6. 2025Mem0: Building Production-Ready AI Agents with Scalable Long-Term Memory28 Apr
  7. 2024Evaluating Very Long-Term Conversational Memory of LLM Agents27 Feb

Other references · 9

  1. 2024HybridFlow: A Flexible and Efficient RLHF Frameworkcited by 1,980
  2. 2025Search-R1: Training LLMs to Reason and Leverage Search Engines with Reinforcement Learningcited by 1,371
  3. 2023MemoryBank: Enhancing Large Language Models with Long-Term Memorycited by 539
  4. 2021Beyond Goldfish Memory: Long-Term Open-Domain Conversationcited by 266
  5. 2025MemAgent: Reshaping Long-Context LLM with Multi-Conv RL-based Memory Agentcited by 235
  6. 2025WebAgent-R1: Training Web Agents via End-to-End Multi-Turn Reinforcement Learningcited by 162
  7. 2025A Comprehensive Survey on Long Context Language Modelingcited by 113
  8. 2025ReMA: Learning to Meta-think for LLMs with Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 78
  9. 2025MemOS: An Operating System for Memory-Augmented Generation (MAG) in Large Language Modelscited by 68

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 9.

9 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026Joint Optimization of Multi-agent Memory System
  2. 2026CHIME: Credit-Aware Hierarchical Memory Evolution for Long-Horizon Agentic Planning
  3. 2026From Player to Master: Enhancing Test-Time Learning of LLM Agents via Reinforcement Learning over Memory
  4. 2026TIGPO: Temporal Instance-Graph Policy Optimization for Long-Horizon LLM Agents
  5. 2026Mem-T: Densifying Rewards for Long-Horizon Memory Agents
  6. 2026MemCo: Memory-Centric Collaboration for Generalizing LLM Agents to Unseen Environments
  7. 2026Tree-based Credit Assignment for Multi-Agent Memory System
  8. 2026Agentic Memory: Learning Unified Long-Term and Short-Term Memory Management for Large Language Model Agents