Governed Persistent Memory: Source-Bound State Semantics and Fail-Closed Release for Long-Horizon Agents

Abstract:Long-term agent memory is usually treated as select--store--retrieve, but retrieval does not decide whether contradictory, superseded, retracted, deleted, or stale records may support an outgoing claim. We introduce Governed Persistent Memory (GPM), an auditable bitemporal state-transition model with source-bound admission, derived lifecycle state, current public barriers, and fail-closed structured release. Five executable clauses cover ledger integrity, source binding, conflict isolation, non-revival after retraction or deletion, and exact claim closure over a fresh view at one verified head. On a prespecified hash-frozen 3,600-case GPM-ReleaseBench, GPM matches all complete outcomes; the strongest of three intentionally simple complete policies matches 1,800/3,600 and makes unmatched releases on 50% of violation cases. A separate sealed end-to-end service evaluation exercises real ingestion and release across eight query families. In its publicly disclosed V3 arm, the governed lane is correct on 2,400/2,400 clusters versus 600/2,400 for ungoverned local Qwen2.5-7B; it repairs all 1,800 baseline failures with no regression (one-sided 95% lower bounds 99.875% and 99.834%). A later V5 reseal over Chinese- and English-command arms, with generation-date pinning and no post-freeze reducer amendment, again obtains 2,400/2,400 per arm. A production-code-independent finite model explores 331,776 semantic and 1,990,656 query states without a full-contract counterexample, and a 100,000-trace three-engine differential yields zero mismatches. These are bounded contract and implementation results, not open-world model accuracy or evidence of world truth. Governed answers in the sealed service evaluation are deterministic service outputs; the 7B result is the ungoverned comparison, not a claim that a language model itself became perfectly accurate.

23 pages, 2 figures, 11 tables. Includes a sealed end-to-end governed-memory service evaluation with an ungoverned local Qwen2.5-7B comparison

Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)

arXiv:2608.12476 [cs.AI]

(or arXiv:2608.12476v2 [cs.AI] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.12476 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

governed-qa-v3-v5.json

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.