mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Speculate with Memory: Lossless Acceleration for LLM Agents

arXiv 2607.12236 ↗First posted 14 Jul 2026cs.LG cs.CLcited by 3

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Software engineering coding agents

Abstract (arXiv)

Speculative execution accelerates LLM agents by using a smaller, cheaper model to predict and pre-launch the next step while the environment is idle. However, existing speculators are stateless and discard all information between tasks, preventing prediction quality from improving with experience. We equip the speculator with three online memory systems that learn from past agent trajectories: a contrastive transition table tracking action-sequence statistics, an episodic memory retrieving contextually similar segments, and a confusion tracker suppressing recurring errors. We evaluate this approach on six benchmarks spanning three speculation types: action prediction, observation prediction, and chained prediction. Memory-augmented speculation yields a 19--39% relative accuracy improvement on action prediction and up to a 2.5× increase on observation prediction tasks with repetitive action spaces. These gains grow continuously as memory accumulates and generalize across speculator models of varying cost. All speculation is lossless because it runs during idle time at zero added wall-clock cost, and the actor's trajectory is identical to non-speculative execution.

Key facts. Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Software engineering coding agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 31 of its 36 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 14 Jul 2026.

Builds on

31 of 36 references.

Closest ancestors · 3

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026AgentHER: Hindsight Experience Replay for LLM Agent Trajectory Relabeling22 Mar
  2. 2025Speculative Actions: A Lossless Framework for Faster Agentic Systems5 Oct
  3. 2024OpenHands: An Open Platform for AI Software Developers as Generalist Agents23 Jul

Other references · 28

  1. 2020Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Taskscited by 9,297
  2. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,695
  3. 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learningcited by 4,276
  4. 2023Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Toolscited by 4,182
  5. 2018HotpotQA: A Dataset for Diverse, Explainable Multi-hop Question Answeringcited by 3,754
  6. 2023Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behaviorcited by 3,568
  7. 2023Voyager: An Open-Ended Embodied Agent with Large Language Modelscited by 2,191
  8. 2023WebArena: A Realistic Web Environment for Building Autonomous Agentscited by 2,006
  9. 2022Fast Inference from Transformers via Speculative Decodingcited by 1,653
  10. 2024τ-bench: A Benchmark for Tool-Agent-User Interaction in Real-World Domainscited by 1,402
  11. 2020ALFWorld: Aligning Text and Embodied Environments for Interactive Learningcited by 1,205
  12. 2023ExpeL: LLM Agents Are Experiential Learnerscited by 876
16 more
  1. 2025τ2-Bench: Evaluating Conversational Agents in a Dual-Control Environmentcited by 627
  2. 2024Agent Workflow Memorycited by 383
  3. 2024AgentBoard: An Analytical Evaluation Board of Multi-turn LLM Agentscited by 339
  4. 2025ReasoningBank: Scaling Agent Self-Evolving with Reasoning Memorycited by 284
  5. 2025Memory-R1: Enhancing Large Language Model Agents to Manage and Utilize Memories via Reinforcement Learningcited by 237
  6. 2023Synapse: Trajectory-as-Exemplar Prompting with Memory for Computer Controlcited by 187
  7. 2023An LLM Compiler for Parallel Function Callingcited by 179
  8. 2025EvolveR: Self-Evolving LLM Agents through an Experience-Driven Lifecyclecited by 137
  9. 2025Evo-Memory: Benchmarking LLM Agent Test-time Learning with Self-Evolving Memorycited by 136
  10. 2025Memp: Exploring Agent Procedural Memorycited by 103
  11. 2023CLIN: A Continually Learning Language Agent for Rapid Task Adaptation and Generalizationcited by 95
  12. 2026Agentic Memory: Learning Unified Long-Term and Short-Term Memory Management for Large Language Model Agentscited by 78
  13. 2025SpecReason: Fast and Accurate Inference-Time Compute via Speculative Reasoningcited by 59
  14. 2025Self-Generated In-Context Examples Improve LLM Agents for Sequential Decision-Making Taskscited by 19
  15. 2026Experiential Reflective Learning for Self-Improving LLM Agentscited by 13
  16. 2026ConfSpec: Efficient Step-Level Speculative Reasoning via Confidence-Gated Verificationcited by 4

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 3.

3 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026Speculative Macro Commit for Faster Tool-Using Agents
  2. 2026AOSpec: Action and Observation Co-Speculation for Low-Latency Agent Serving
  3. 2026SPORK: Self-Speculative Forking to Accelerate Agentic LLM Inference
  4. 2026TomasuLLM: Out-of-Order Speculative Execution for LLM Agents
  5. 2025Reducing Latency of LLM Search Agent via Speculation-based Algorithm-System Co-Design
  6. 2026MemAgent: Learning to Manage Heterogeneous Memory Providers for LLM Agents
  7. 2025Dynamic Speculative Agent Planning
  8. 2026EvoMemBench: Benchmarking Agent Memory from a Self-Evolving Perspective