translation/source/documents/course/03-agent-memory/24-working-memory-in-practice.md

Working Memory in Practice

Working memory is particularly useful for:

1. Personal assistants that need to remember user preferences
2. Customer support agents that need to track issue details
3. Educational agents that need to remember a student's progress
4. Task-oriented agents that need to track the state of a complex task

By using working memory effectively, you can create agents that feel more personalized and attentive to user needs.

Here are some best practices for using working memory effectively:

1. Be selective about what goes into working memory

   • Focus on information that will be relevant across multiple conversations
   • Don't overload working memory with transient details

2. Use clear instructions

   • Give your agent explicit guidance on when and how to update working memory
   • Instruct it to check memory before asking for information the user has already provided

3. Design a thoughtful template

   • Structure your template based on the specific needs of your agent
   • Include sections for different types of information
   • Use clear labels and organization to make information easy to find

4. Test thoroughly

   • Verify that your agent correctly updates and retrieves information from working memory
   • Test edge cases like conflicting information or corrections

In the next step, we'll bring everything together to create a complete memory-enhanced agent with all the features we've explored.