Forms, Lifecycle Management,
and Personalization
Updated October 18, 2026 · 56-page manuscript · Original figures & open reading resources
What should an agent remember, how should that memory change, and when should it shape an action? The survey connects these questions across five perspectives.
Text · Vectors · KV cache
Graphs · Parameters
Form · Retrieve
Evolve · Forget
Preferences · References
Proactivity · Privacy
Personal computing · Head-worn
Personal sensing · Embodied
Memory quality · Personalization
Lifecycle · Runtime cost
SECTION 1 · INTRODUCTION
Personal devices bring together continuous multimodal experience, bounded resources, and a user's long-term history. Useful agent memory must connect all three.
This survey connects memory forms and lifecycle management to personalization, then examines deployment evidence, evaluation, and the challenges of sustained use on personal devices.
SECTION 2 · FOUNDATIONS
Agent memory keeps information from past observations, actions, and feedback available to the current decision process.
Short-term and long-term memory describe retention; working memory describes the active use of information in an ongoing task.
On-device agent memory is retained and processed on a personal device under resource budgets and data-use rules.
Peak runtime memory covers the agent as a whole: memory processing and model inference draw on the same available capacity.
Specify what may be retained, for how long, and for which tasks. Later access, disclosure, correction, and deletion remain subject to user authorization.
A form defines the units in which memory is stored and reused. These forms can coexist: a personal fact, a reusable skill, and a repeated context need not share the same representation.
Selected experience is retained as natural language or structured text, making personal information available for direct inspection and revision.
A memory store needs more than a write path. Its contents must enter tasks at the right time, incorporate new evidence, and leave when they are no longer useful or permitted.
Decide what enters memory, in which units, and with what provenance.
Admission · Units · ProvenanceDecide when to access memory, where to look, and how much evidence to return.
Triggering · Routing · ReductionConsolidate jointly valid evidence and update facts or procedures as conditions change.
Consolidation · UpdatingControl continued residence and influence through selection, deletion, and unlearning.
Selective · Directed · UnlearningPersonal histories help an agent interpret preferences, resolve references, and anticipate needs. Privacy safeguards constrain how that history is retained and used throughout the system.
Learn from explicit feedback and repeated behavior, while allowing preferences to change with context and time.
Link a request to the people, places, possessions, and experiences in a particular user's world.
Use recurring intent and present conditions to judge whether an intervention is timely and welcome.
Four platform families connect memory design to the conditions in which agents operate. Device setting and execution location are examined separately.
Transient interface state, cross-application history, and local files support tasks that outlive a single screen.
First-person sensing requires selective capture; immersive sessions require spatial and interaction continuity.
Intermittent physiological, motion, and acoustic signals become event records and longer-term personal context.
Maps, object states, and reusable skills inform navigation and manipulation within perception–action loops.
↳ A study's inclusion in a device context does not by itself establish end-to-end on-device execution. Section 6 distinguishes local components, remote computation, physical experiments, and simulation.
Evaluate information quality and useful behavior alongside the resources needed to sustain them.
Recall, evidence access, and reasoning over history.
Formation, updating, retention, and forgetting.
User-specific interpretation and task outcomes.
Memory footprint, latency, energy, and maintenance.
General and device-context entries from Table 7-1.
Scroll sideways to see all columns ↔
| Benchmark | Scenario | Evaluation focus | Resources |
|---|
Links reproduce the latest manuscript. “Paper only” means Table 7-1 does not specify a separate resource link.
Sustained use on personal devices raises questions that extend beyond a single successful retrieval.
Coordinate retrieval and background maintenance as memory, workloads, and available resources change.
Preserve provenance and meaning through successive summaries, updates, and derived records.
Carry uncertainty forward and revise personal preferences as circumstances and feedback evolve.
Carry restrictions through derivation and reassess permitted use as tasks and purposes change.
Check removal from stored records and learned influence while preserving unrelated capabilities.
Connect controlled histories to sustained interaction, accumulated costs, and the user's management burden.
Search all 215 distinct works cited in the latest manuscript. Topic labels indicate where a work is cited in the survey.
