LightMem: Ending AI Agents’ “Goldfish Memory” – The 2025 Breakthrough in Memory Systems

A Frustrating Scenario for Users Imagine spending 20 minutes planning a Tokyo trip with your AI assistant—from flight times to民宿 (minshuku) bookings. Two hours later, you ask, “What’s the Shinkansen schedule to Kyoto?” and it replies, “Did you mention Tokyo or Kyoto earlier?” This isn’t a sci-fi comedy trope; it was the “memory lapse” dilemma plaguing most LLM-powered agents in 2024. That all changed in October 2025, when a team from Zhejiang University unveiled LightMem—a framework that finally gave AI agents the ability to “remember” consistently. More importantly, it achieved the impossible balance: retaining more information while using fewer resources. …