@inproceedings{yang-etal-2026-beyond-static,
title = "Beyond Static Summarization: Proactive Memory Extraction for {LLM} Agents",
author = "Yang, Chengyuan and
Sun, Zequn and
Wei, Wei and
Hu, Wei",
editor = "Lee, Hung-Yi and
Dev, Sunipa and
Li, Jessy and
Elliott, Desmond",
booktitle = "Findings of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics: {EMNLP} 2026",
month = oct,
year = "2026",
address = "Budapest, Hungary",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.1245/",
pages = "26353--26367",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-462-0",
abstract = "Memory management is vital for LLM agents in long-term and personalized interactions.Most previous work studies how to retrieve and use memory, but pays less attention to how memory is extracted.We find two main limitations in existing methods.First, extraction is ``ahead-of-time'': the agent saves information before it knows future tasks.A single summary prompt often mixes details, events, and relations, so useful information is lost.Second, extraction is usually one-off. Without verification, errors and hallucinations may stay in memory for a long time. To address these limitations, we propose ProMem, a proactive memory extraction framework.It separates details, events, and relations, and uses different extraction strategies for each type.It also checks completeness to recover missed events and verifies facts at the atomic level to reduce hallucinations.Experiments show that ProMem improves memory completeness and QA accuracy, while keeping a good balance between quality and token cost."
}<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<modsCollection xmlns="http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3">
<mods ID="yang-etal-2026-beyond-static">
<titleInfo>
<title>Beyond Static Summarization: Proactive Memory Extraction for LLM Agents</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Chengyuan</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Yang</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Zequn</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Sun</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Wei</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Wei</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Wei</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Hu</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">author</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<dateIssued>2026-10</dateIssued>
</originInfo>
<typeOfResource>text</typeOfResource>
<relatedItem type="host">
<titleInfo>
<title>Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026</title>
</titleInfo>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Hung-Yi</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Lee</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Sunipa</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Dev</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Jessy</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Li</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<name type="personal">
<namePart type="given">Desmond</namePart>
<namePart type="family">Elliott</namePart>
<role>
<roleTerm authority="marcrelator" type="text">editor</roleTerm>
</role>
</name>
<originInfo>
<publisher>Association for Computational Linguistics</publisher>
<place>
<placeTerm type="text">Budapest, Hungary</placeTerm>
</place>
</originInfo>
<genre authority="marcgt">conference publication</genre>
<identifier type="isbn">979-8-89176-462-0</identifier>
</relatedItem>
<abstract>Memory management is vital for LLM agents in long-term and personalized interactions.Most previous work studies how to retrieve and use memory, but pays less attention to how memory is extracted.We find two main limitations in existing methods.First, extraction is “ahead-of-time”: the agent saves information before it knows future tasks.A single summary prompt often mixes details, events, and relations, so useful information is lost.Second, extraction is usually one-off. Without verification, errors and hallucinations may stay in memory for a long time. To address these limitations, we propose ProMem, a proactive memory extraction framework.It separates details, events, and relations, and uses different extraction strategies for each type.It also checks completeness to recover missed events and verifies facts at the atomic level to reduce hallucinations.Experiments show that ProMem improves memory completeness and QA accuracy, while keeping a good balance between quality and token cost.</abstract>
<identifier type="citekey">yang-etal-2026-beyond-static</identifier>
<location>
<url>https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.1245/</url>
</location>
<part>
<date>2026-10</date>
<extent unit="page">
<start>26353</start>
<end>26367</end>
</extent>
</part>
</mods>
</modsCollection>
%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Beyond Static Summarization: Proactive Memory Extraction for LLM Agents
%A Yang, Chengyuan
%A Sun, Zequn
%A Wei, Wei
%A Hu, Wei
%Y Lee, Hung-Yi
%Y Dev, Sunipa
%Y Li, Jessy
%Y Elliott, Desmond
%S Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2026
%D 2026
%8 October
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Budapest, Hungary
%@ 979-8-89176-462-0
%F yang-etal-2026-beyond-static
%X Memory management is vital for LLM agents in long-term and personalized interactions.Most previous work studies how to retrieve and use memory, but pays less attention to how memory is extracted.We find two main limitations in existing methods.First, extraction is “ahead-of-time”: the agent saves information before it knows future tasks.A single summary prompt often mixes details, events, and relations, so useful information is lost.Second, extraction is usually one-off. Without verification, errors and hallucinations may stay in memory for a long time. To address these limitations, we propose ProMem, a proactive memory extraction framework.It separates details, events, and relations, and uses different extraction strategies for each type.It also checks completeness to recover missed events and verifies facts at the atomic level to reduce hallucinations.Experiments show that ProMem improves memory completeness and QA accuracy, while keeping a good balance between quality and token cost.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.1245/
%P 26353-26367
Markdown (Informal)
[Beyond Static Summarization: Proactive Memory Extraction for LLM Agents](https://aclanthology.org/2026.findings-emnlp.1245/) (Yang et al., Findings 2026)
ACL