Agent Memory Research in 2026: A Data-Driven Survey and Extended Taxonomy
ResearchAI & Machine Learning
agent-memoryllm-agentssurveytaxonomytemporal-dynamicsmultimodal-memoryneurocognitionopen-accesszenododata-driven
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Published on Zenodo: 10.5281/zenodo.20780690 · Companion Dataset: 10.5281/zenodo.20780696 · Repository: github.com/tobias-weiss-ai-xr/agent-memory-research
Related: Agent Memory Paper List — interactive web UI with filtering by 27 taxonomy cells
This extended survey builds on Liu et al.'s foundational "Memory in the Age of AI Agents" (arXiv 2512.13564, ~200 papers up to January 2026) by extending both the paper catalogue and the taxonomy itself. As of June 2026, the curated list covers 220 papers — including 21 works published between February and June 2026 that reveal cross-cutting themes the original 3×3×3 taxonomy was not designed to capture.
The paper list is treated as a structured dataset: a single papers.yaml file is the source of truth. Automated scripts validate entries, fetch metadata from arXiv and Semantic Scholar, discover new papers via the arXiv API, and generate outputs including README, JSON export, and BibTeX references. A GitHub Actions workflow enforces validation on every contribution.
This methodology is generalisable to any survey that must remain current — it eliminates manual curation errors and makes updates a matter of running a pipeline rather than editing a LaTeX table.
The original taxonomy organises papers along three axes — Forms (Token-level / Parametric / Latent), Functions (Factual / Experiential / Working), and Dynamics (Formation / Evolution / Retrieval) — yielding 27 cells. We add three orthogonal dimensions:
| Dimension | Levels | What It Captures |
|---|---|---|
| Temporal Dynamics | None → Decay → Consolidation → Bi-temporal | How memory evolves over time: forgetting curves, sleep consolidation, temporal knowledge graphs |
| Modality | Text-only → Multimodal-in → Multimodal-out → Full-multimodal | The sensory channels memory systems handle: vision, language, audio, embodiment |
| Biological Inspiration | None → Cognitive-metaphor → Neuro-inspired → Brain-architecture | Degree of fidelity to human memory: from loose metaphors to detailed neural models |
These dimensions are additive — they do not replace the original taxonomy but enrich it, revealing patterns invisible in the 3×3×3 space alone.
The analysis identifies:
The roadmap spans short-term (unified benchmarks), medium-term (compositional memory, formal trade-off models), and transformative long-term goals (multi-year stability, privacy-compliant forgetting, cross-modal transfer).
The survey highlights eight systems that illustrate the architectural diversity of the 2026 landscape:
| System | Key Innovation | Cell |
|---|---|---|
| Mem0 | Multi-signal retrieval; 92.5% on LoCoMo | Factual/Token-level |
| FluxMem | Adaptive memory structure selection per query | Factual/Token-level |
| SCM | NREM/REM sleep-inspired consolidation cycles | Experiential/Latent |
| Engram | Bi-temporal knowledge graph with dual-process retrieval | Factual/Latent |
| CraniMem | Neurocognitive gating with bounded episodic buffer | Experiential/Token-level |
| MemRL | Runtime RL on episodic memory | Experiential/Parametric |
| All-Mem | Lifelong topology evolution | Experiential/Latent |
| TeleMem | Long-term multimodal memory for agentic AI | Working/Latent |
The paper was submitted to arXiv in June 2026 but was blocked by the October 2025 review-article policy, which no longer accepts literature reviews. We chose Zenodo as the primary venue (which provides stable DOIs through the CERN infrastructure) and released all data, code, and analysis under an MIT license.
The agent-memory-research repository hosts:
papers.yaml — structured source of truth (220 entries)scripts/ — validation, metadata enrichment, figure generation, BibTeX exportdocs/ — interactive GitHub Pages site with filtering by category, date, and keyword searchpaper/ — full LaTeX source and compiled PDFWeiß, T. (2026). Agent Memory Research in 2026: A Data-Driven Survey and Extended Taxonomy. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20780690