Memo-As-Source Confusion
Anti-pattern: the agent cites its own past memos as ground truth instead of re-verifying them against the artifacts they describe, accumulating false confidence in stale summaries.
Problem
When asked a question about an artifact's current state, the agent quotes its own past memo as if it were the artifact itself, rather than re-reading the artifact in the same step. Memos compress and persist; artifacts change. The result is a confident, well-cited answer that is silently wrong, and because the agent is citing its own writing the wrongness can be reproduced across many turns before anything from the outside contradicts it.
Solution
Don't. When making any claim about an artifact's state, read the artifact in the same tick — not the memo about it. If memo-and-artifact disagree, treat the memo as outdated and rewrite it from the artifact. Tag memos with the timestamp they were last verified against the artifact; refuse to trust them past a configurable age without re-verification.
When to use
- The agent maintains long-lived memo files or status documents that summarize external artifacts.
- Workspace summaries are routinely cited in answers without re-reading the underlying files.
- False confidence in stale state has been observed at least once.
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