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ACL Findings2026

Memp: Exploring Agent Procedural Memory

Runnan Fang, Yuan Liang, Xiaobin Wang, Jialong Wu, Shuofei Qiao, Pengjun Xie, Fei Huang, Huajun Chen, Ningyu Zhang

Abstract

Large Language Models (LLMs) based agents excel at diverse tasks, yet they suffer from brittle procedural memory that is manually engineered or entangled in static parameters. In this work, we investigate strategies to endow agents with a learnable, updatable, and lifelong procedural memory. We propose M em p that distills past agent trajectories into both finegrained, step-by-step instructions and higherlevel, script-like abstractions, and explore the impact of different strategies for Build, Retrieval, and Update of procedural memory. Coupled with a dynamic regimen that continuously updates, corrects, and deprecates its contents, this repository evolves in lockstep with new experience. Empirical evaluation on TravelPlanner and ALFWorld shows that as the memory repository is refined, agents achieve steadily higher success rates and greater efficiency on analogous tasks. Moreover, procedural memory built from a stronger model retains its value: migrating the procedural memory to a weaker model can also yield substantial performance gains.

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Cited by top-tier papers12

  1. ReasoningBank: Scaling Agent Self-Evolving with Reasoning MemorySiru Ouyang, Jun Yan, I-Hung Hsu, Yanfei Chen et al.ICLR 2026 · 244 citations
  2. LightMem: Lightweight and Efficient Memory-Augmented GenerationJizhan Fang, Xinle Deng, Haoming Xu, Ziyan Jiang et al.ICLR 2026 · 162 citations
  3. MemGen: Weaving Generative Latent Memory for Self-Evolving AgentsGuibin Zhang, Muxin Fu, Shuicheng YanICLR 2026 · 102 citations
  4. MemEvolve: Meta-Evolution of Agent Memory SystemsGuibin Zhang, Haotian Ren, Chong Zhan, Junhao Wang et al.ICML 2026 · 69 citations
  5. Nested Browser-Use Learning for Agentic Information SeekingBaixuan Li, Jialong Wu, Wenbiao Yin, Kuan Li et al.ACL 2026 · 6 citations

Builds on13

  1. A-Mem: Agentic Memory for LLM AgentsWujiang Xu, Zujie Liang, Kai Mei, Hang Gao et al.NeurIPS 2025 · 1,138 citations
  2. ALFWorld: Aligning Text and Embodied Environments for Interactive LearningMohit Shridhar, Xingdi Yuan, Marc-Alexandre Côté, Yonatan Bisk et al.ICLR 2021 · 819 citations
  3. TravelPlanner: A Benchmark for Real-World Planning with Language AgentsJian Xie, Kai Zhang, Jiangjie Chen, Tinghui Zhu et al.ICML 2024 · 376 citations
  4. MemAgent: Reshaping Long-Context LLM with Multi-Conv RL-based Memory AgentHongli Yu, Tinghong Chen, Jiangtao Feng, Jiangjie Chen et al.ICLR 2026 · 231 citations
  5. MEM1: Learning to Synergize Memory and Reasoning for Efficient Long-Horizon AgentsZijian Zhou, Ao Qu, Zhaoxuan Wu, Sunghwan Kim et al.ICLR 2026 · 223 citations

Related papers

  1. Remember Me, Refine Me: A Dynamic Procedural Memory Framework for Experience-Driven Agent EvolutionZouying Cao, Jiaji Deng, Li Yu, Weikang Zhou et al.ACL Findings 2026 · 2 citations
  2. Agentic Memory: Learning Unified Long-Term and Short-Term Memory Management for Large Language Model AgentsYi Yu, Liuyi Yao, Yuexiang Xie, Qingquan Tan et al.ACL 2026 · 40 citations
  3. Coarse-to-Fine Grounded Memory for LLM Agent PlanningWei Yang, Jinwei Xiao, Hongming Zhang, Qingyang Zhang et al.EMNLP 2025
  4. ProcMEM: Learning Reusable Procedural Memory from Experience via Non-Parametric PPO for LLM AgentsQIRUI MI, Zhijian Ma, Mengyue Yang, Yisen Wang et al.ICML 2026
  5. AdaMEM: Test-Time Adaptive Memory for Language AgentsYunxiang Zhang, Yiheng Li, Ali Payani, Lu WangICML 2026
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