Mind · Memory
ExperienceSharding
Agent bifurcation on context saturation: active vs archival specialists
Definition
Mechanism
Applies the Shard primitive to agent memory. When context fills, the agent splits into two specialized agents (active vs archival) rather than forgetting. It segments history into discrete blocks via ChunkMerge before distributing them across the agent cluster.
Preconditions
- Large dataset or experience stream
- Multiple learners
Postconditions
- Distributed knowledge base
Invariants
- Splits when context reaches `split_threshold`, rather than forgetting.
- Splits into an active agent and an archival one; both retain their history.
- Every experience has exactly one owning shard; access copies create no second owner.
- Recombining the shards reconstructs the global pattern.
Risks
Failure modes
Coordination Overhead
Overhead between shards increases as shard count grows.
Relationships
Builds on
References
Hierarchical context management
Infrastructure
Deterministic partitioning of state
Used by
References
Self-supervised reinforcement via memory sampling
Expansion of cognitive capability through recursive decomposition of concepts into contract-bounded sub-concepts
Reference
Parameters
split_thresholdRatio, (0.0, 1.0)- Share of context capacity that triggers the split.
cross_shard_policyEnum, {Forbid, Replicate, Broadcast}- How a read that spans shards is served.
routing_keyEnum, {AgentId, TaskType, Random}- What decides which shard an experience is assigned to.
shard_countInteger, [2, 64]- Partitions the history is distributed across, distinct from the active/archival split.