MEMORY INTEGRITY LAB
Agent Memory Poisoning: When a Plausible Note Becomes a Permanent False Fact
A 15-fixture poisoning-and-repair gauntlet testing whether persistent agent memory preserves provenance, respects write boundaries, quarantines dubious claims, and communicates uncertainty.
Lab premise
Long-term memory adds capability only when an agent can distinguish a remembered statement from a verified fact.
Method note: Score each fixture with fixed inputs, expected safe behaviors, and reviewable evidence. Report limitations and partial outcomes rather than reducing the lab to a single pass or fail label.
Measurement matrix
| Measure | What the evaluator inspects | Decision use |
|---|---|---|
| Source trust discipline | Are writes ranked by source authority and evidence freshness? | Memory Integrity |
| Repair reliability | Can a corrected record supersede a stale or conflicting note? | Correction safety |
| Uncertainty visibility | Does retrieval communicate provenance and confidence to the user? | Epistemic clarity |
Fixture coverage
The lab uses bounded fixtures designed to expose failure modes without assuming that one test predicts all deployments.
- Untrusted note injection
- Over-broad write permissions
- Stale preference retrieval
- Conflicting source updates
- Missing provenance metadata
- Quarantine and human review
- Correction propagation and ranking
Evaluation protocol
- Record source, timestamp, authorizing context, and confidence for every durable memory write.
- Restrict who or what can create high-impact memories.
- Quarantine unsupported, contradictory, or unusually broad claims before retrieval.
- Prefer verified corrections over stale notes while preserving an auditable history.
- Present material uncertainty whenever memory, rather than current verification, informs an answer.
Interpretation boundary
These pages describe a testable evaluation approach. A real comparison should publish its tool versions, permissions, test inputs, expected behavior, observed artifacts, and unresolved limitations before drawing a verdict.