Benchmarking Agent Memory in Interdependent Multi-Session Agentic Tasks

Zexue He, Yu Wang, Churan Zhi, Yuanzhe Hu, Tzu-Ping Chen, Lang Yin, Ze Chen, Tong Arthur Wu, Siru Ouyang, Zihan Wang, Jiaxin Pei, Julian Mcauley, Yejin Choi, Alex Pentland
Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Machine Learning, PMLR 306:41975-42005, 2026.

Abstract

Existing evaluations of agents with memory typically assess memorization and action in isolation. One class of benchmarks evaluates memorization by testing recall of past conversations or text but fails to capture how memory is used to guide future decisions. Another class focuses on agents acting in single-session tasks without the need for long-term memory. However, in realistic settings, memorization and action are tightly coupled: agents acquire memory while interacting with the environment, and subsequently rely on that memory to solve future tasks. To capture this setting, we introduce MemoryArena, a unified evaluation gym for benchmarking agent memory in multi-session Memory-Agent-Environment loops. The benchmark consists of human-crafted agentic tasks with explicitly interdependent subtasks, where agents must learn from earlier actions and feedback by distilling experiences into memory, and subsequently use that memory to guide later actions to solve the overall task. MEMORYARENA supports evaluation across web navigation, preference-constrained planning, progressive information search, and sequential formal reasoning, and reveals that agents with near-saturated performance on existing long-context memory benchmarks like LoCoMo perform poorly in our agentic setting, exposing a gap in current evaluations for agents with memory.

Cite this Paper


BibTeX
@InProceedings{pmlr-v306-he26am, title = {Benchmarking Agent Memory in Interdependent Multi-Session Agentic Tasks}, author = {He, Zexue and Wang, Yu and Zhi, Churan and Hu, Yuanzhe and Chen, Tzu-Ping and Yin, Lang and Chen, Ze and Wu, Tong Arthur and Ouyang, Siru and Wang, Zihan and Pei, Jiaxin and Mcauley, Julian and Choi, Yejin and Pentland, Alex}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Machine Learning}, pages = {41975--42005}, year = {2026}, editor = {Zhang, Tong and Dudik, Miroslav and Jaggi, Martin and Agarwal, Alekh and Li, Sharon and Schuurmans, Dale and Zhu, Jerry and Berkenkamp, Felix and Dong, Hanze and Bietti, Alberto}, volume = {306}, series = {Proceedings of Machine Learning Research}, month = {06--11 Jul}, publisher = {PMLR}, pdf = {https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mlresearch/v306/main/assets/he26am/he26am.pdf}, url = {https://proceedings.mlr.press/v306/he26am.html}, abstract = {Existing evaluations of agents with memory typically assess memorization and action in isolation. One class of benchmarks evaluates memorization by testing recall of past conversations or text but fails to capture how memory is used to guide future decisions. Another class focuses on agents acting in single-session tasks without the need for long-term memory. However, in realistic settings, memorization and action are tightly coupled: agents acquire memory while interacting with the environment, and subsequently rely on that memory to solve future tasks. To capture this setting, we introduce MemoryArena, a unified evaluation gym for benchmarking agent memory in multi-session Memory-Agent-Environment loops. The benchmark consists of human-crafted agentic tasks with explicitly interdependent subtasks, where agents must learn from earlier actions and feedback by distilling experiences into memory, and subsequently use that memory to guide later actions to solve the overall task. MEMORYARENA supports evaluation across web navigation, preference-constrained planning, progressive information search, and sequential formal reasoning, and reveals that agents with near-saturated performance on existing long-context memory benchmarks like LoCoMo perform poorly in our agentic setting, exposing a gap in current evaluations for agents with memory.} }
Endnote
%0 Conference Paper %T Benchmarking Agent Memory in Interdependent Multi-Session Agentic Tasks %A Zexue He %A Yu Wang %A Churan Zhi %A Yuanzhe Hu %A Tzu-Ping Chen %A Lang Yin %A Ze Chen %A Tong Arthur Wu %A Siru Ouyang %A Zihan Wang %A Jiaxin Pei %A Julian Mcauley %A Yejin Choi %A Alex Pentland %B Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Machine Learning %C Proceedings of Machine Learning Research %D 2026 %E Tong Zhang %E Miroslav Dudik %E Martin Jaggi %E Alekh Agarwal %E Sharon Li %E Dale Schuurmans %E Jerry Zhu %E Felix Berkenkamp %E Hanze Dong %E Alberto Bietti %F pmlr-v306-he26am %I PMLR %P 41975--42005 %U https://proceedings.mlr.press/v306/he26am.html %V 306 %X Existing evaluations of agents with memory typically assess memorization and action in isolation. One class of benchmarks evaluates memorization by testing recall of past conversations or text but fails to capture how memory is used to guide future decisions. Another class focuses on agents acting in single-session tasks without the need for long-term memory. However, in realistic settings, memorization and action are tightly coupled: agents acquire memory while interacting with the environment, and subsequently rely on that memory to solve future tasks. To capture this setting, we introduce MemoryArena, a unified evaluation gym for benchmarking agent memory in multi-session Memory-Agent-Environment loops. The benchmark consists of human-crafted agentic tasks with explicitly interdependent subtasks, where agents must learn from earlier actions and feedback by distilling experiences into memory, and subsequently use that memory to guide later actions to solve the overall task. MEMORYARENA supports evaluation across web navigation, preference-constrained planning, progressive information search, and sequential formal reasoning, and reveals that agents with near-saturated performance on existing long-context memory benchmarks like LoCoMo perform poorly in our agentic setting, exposing a gap in current evaluations for agents with memory.
APA
He, Z., Wang, Y., Zhi, C., Hu, Y., Chen, T., Yin, L., Chen, Z., Wu, T.A., Ouyang, S., Wang, Z., Pei, J., Mcauley, J., Choi, Y. & Pentland, A.. (2026). Benchmarking Agent Memory in Interdependent Multi-Session Agentic Tasks. Proceedings of the 43rd International Conference on Machine Learning, in Proceedings of Machine Learning Research 306:41975-42005 Available from https://proceedings.mlr.press/v306/he26am.html.

Related Material