Dense retrieval and reranking over unchanged conversation history remain a serious baseline.
Raw-RAG leads the compared memory systems in six of seven benchmark/model settings, by 0.13–5.53 percentage points, excluding full-context reference runs. The study covers LoCoMo, LongMemEval, MEME and MemoryAgentBench. In one million-token ingestion comparison it takes 0.33 hours versus 3.25–26.95 hours for completed comparison systems.
Evidence & limits. These are author-reported offline results, not interactive-agent performance. Ingestion excludes answer generation and evaluation; some baselines reuse published scores. Retrieval, packing and reader differences confound a simple “rewriting loses information” explanation. On a PersonaMem-v2 extension, Raw-RAG ranks third. Raw logs also require privacy and deletion controls.
Before adding a memory layer, benchmark source-preserving retrieval under the same reader and budget. Keep evidence recoverable alongside summaries, with explicit retention and deletion rules.