memory-consolidationlisted

# Memory consolidation Memory written incrementally accumulates duplicates, near-duplicates, and superseded facts. Consolidation is the background pass that turns a log of observations into a coherent store, which is what keeps retrieval useful at scale. ## Method 1. **Deduplicate on meaning, not on text.** Two differently worded records of the same fact are one fact, and near-duplicate detection is the bulk of the work. 2. **Merge with the strongest provenance.** When combining, keep the earliest establishment and the most recent confirmation, since both carry information. 3. **Abstract repeated specifics into a general fact.** Several observations of the same pattern become one statement, with the instances discardable. 4. **Resolve contradictions explicitly.** Prefer recent and user-stated over old and inferred, and record that a change happened rather than silently replacing (see long-term-user-memory). 5. **Run it as background work, not inline.** Consolidation is expensive and must not sit in the request path (see media-processing-queue for the analogous pattern). 6. **Keep the raw records until consolidation is verified.** A bad merge is unrecoverable otherwise, and consolidation logic changes. 7. **Measure retrieval quality before and after.** Consolidation that shrinks the store while degrading recall has traded the wrong way (see rag-evaluation). ## Boundaries Consolidation loses detail deliberately, and the lost detail oc