Nous: A Predictive World Model for Long-Term Agent Memory

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2606.22030v1
• Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2026 13:07:00 GMT
• Title: Nous: A Predictive World Model for Long-Term Agent Memory
• Abstract summary: Nous is a novel agent memory architecture grounded in the principle that knowledge is prediction, not storage.<n>Each incoming observation is scored by its information-theoretic surprise S = -log2 P(obs | D)<n>The primary stored artifact is the delta, a record of the shift from prior to posterior belief, rather than the fact itself.
• Score: 1.5229257192293202
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: We present Nous, a novel agent memory architecture grounded in the principle that knowledge is prediction, not storage. Rather than persisting facts as database records, vector embeddings, or knowledge-graph triples, Nous maintains a predictive world model: a collection of categorical probability distributions, called dimensions, one per entity-attribute pair observed in conversation. Each incoming observation is scored by its information-theoretic surprise S = -log2 P(obs | D), and the distribution is updated via a closed-form Bayesian posterior. The primary stored artifact is the delta, a record of the shift from prior to posterior belief, rather than the fact itself. Forgetting emerges naturally as entropy decay toward the uniform distribution, and identity resolution is handled through mutual information between entity dimension sets. Evaluated on the LoCoMo long-term conversational memory benchmark across ten conversations (1,540 questions) using GPT-4o-mini as backbone, Nous achieves F1 of 63.50 (single-hop), 55.32 (multi-hop), 58.57 (temporal), and 62.50 (open-domain). Against A-MEM's self-reported GPT-4o-mini numbers, Nous shows substantial gains in three of four categories, though we note that independent citations of A-MEM's results disagree with each other on category assignment, a reproducibility issue we discuss openly rather than resolve unilaterally. We additionally compare against BeliefMem, a concurrently developed system built on the same core premise of belief-based rather than deterministic memory; on the same benchmark and backbone, Nous's self-reported numbers exceed BeliefMem's self-reported numbers on all four categories, though we flag several uncontrolled differences between the two evaluation pipelines that prevent this from being a fully controlled comparison. Nous requires no external vector database or graph engine.

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