agent-context-state-memory-designlisted

# Agent Context, State, and Memory Design Design the information lifecycle an agent can observe and retain. Read [the state and memory lifecycle reference](references/state-memory-lifecycle.md) when mapping scopes, authority, retention, or poisoning controls. ## Preconditions Identify the user population, tenant model, agent identities, session boundary, data authorities, privacy obligations, persistence services, and decision the design must support. Mark proposed stores and policies as proposed. ## Workflow 1. Inventory prompt instructions, conversation or event history, request context, session state, user state, application state, long-term memory, retrieved knowledge, tool results, and artifacts. 2. For each item, record the authoritative source, subject identity, tenant, writer, reader, purpose, effective time, freshness rule, retention, deletion path, and audit evidence. 3. Distinguish durable product truth from convenience memory. A summary, embedding, model inference, or repeated statement is not automatically authoritative. 4. Trace write paths, conflict resolution, supersession, revocation, compaction, and readback. Identify where stale or poisoned material could remain influential. 5. Test isolation across requests, sessions, users, tenants, agents, and evaluation cases. Include attempted cross-scope reads and writes. 6. Review sensitive-data minimization, access control, encryption boundaries, export, deletion, legal retention, and incident response. 7. Defi