Episodic Memory

Master how AI agents store and retrieve personal experiences, contextual memories, and temporal events

The Personal Experience Database

While semantic memory stores facts ("Paris is the capital of France"), episodic memory stores experiences: "The user asked about pricing at 10 AM yesterday."

Episodic memory is your agent's autobiographical database—a chronological record of interactions, conversations, decisions, and events. It enables agents to remember what happened, when it happened, and in what context.

This temporal, contextual memory is critical for maintaining coherent conversations, personalizing responses, and learning from past interactions.

Interactive: Semantic vs Episodic Memory

Toggle between memory types to see how they differ in structure and purpose.

📚

Semantic Memory (Facts & Knowledge)

Timeless, context-independent information about the world.

Example
"Enterprise plans include 10,000 API calls per day"
Characteristics
• No timestamp • No user context • Universal truth • Reusable across all conversations
Storage
Knowledge graphs, ontologies, vector embeddings
Retrieval
By concept, category, or semantic similarity
Updates
Rarely changes; fact corrections only
Key Insight: Semantic memory answers "What is true?" while episodic memory answers "What happened to me?"

🎯 Why Agents Need Episodic Memory

  • Conversation Continuity: Reference past messages and maintain context
  • Personalization: Remember user preferences and interaction patterns
  • Learning from Experience: Adapt based on what worked/failed before
  • Temporal Reasoning: Understand sequences, trends, and patterns over time

🏗️ Core Components

  • Event: What happened (message, action, decision)
  • Timestamp: When it happened (precise temporal marker)
  • Context: Who, where, why (session, user, intent)
  • Metadata: Additional attributes (sentiment, topic, outcome)

💼 Real-World Example: Customer Support Agent

Without Episodic Memory:
User: "I'm still having that issue we discussed"
Agent: "What issue? I don't see any previous conversation." ❌
Result: Frustrated user, repetitive explanations, poor experience
With Episodic Memory:
User: "I'm still having that issue we discussed"
Agent: "Yes, the login timeout issue from yesterday. You mentioned it happens after 5 minutes. I see we escalated it to engineering. Let me check the status..." ✅
Result: Seamless continuity, personalized service, efficient resolution