Evidence-linked trend hypothesis
Company memory needs write and correction loops
Retrieval is only one stage of memory; durable organizational knowledge also needs scoped writes, corrections, provenance, versioning, and invalidation.
Current thesis
- Company memory becomes useful when real work continuously updates a governed knowledge layer, not when an agent merely searches a larger document pile.
- Confidence: high.
- Supported by 5 normalized raw signals.
Source ledger
Publishable sources attached to this record.
| # | Source | Role | Public status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | promptql.iosource | primary receipt | source_urls |
| 2 | aclanthology.orgsource | supporting receipt | source_urls |
| 3 | github.comrepo | supporting receipt | source_urls |
| 4 | careersatdoordash.comsource | supporting receipt | source_urls |
| 5 | github.comrepo | supporting receipt | source_urls |
What retrieval leaves unresolved
A relevant document can still be stale, unauthorized, contradicted, or scoped to another team. A long context window can expose more text without deciding which statement should change the next action. Those are memory lifecycle questions, not search-quality questions.
Supporting evidence
- PromptQL captures a correction during work, proposes a reusable rule, and keeps citations, scope, revision history, and editorial control around the update.
- DoorDash stores semantic memory as independently versioned components and a manifest, then refreshes different memory layers at different cadences.
- MemoryData evaluates storage, retrieval, updating, and forgetting across a sequence rather than scoring only a final response.
- OpenWiki turns repository understanding into a maintained artifact that can be inspected and refreshed outside an individual session.
Operational consequence
Every memory entry needs a write path, evidence, owner or authority, scope, timestamp, supersession behavior, and rollback. Human correction is a valuable write signal, but it should produce a reviewable proposal rather than an unbounded automatic truth update.