Give an agent memory across sessions without blowing up the context window or leaking between users
Memory is a retrieval problem plus a write-policy problem plus a privacy problem. Most candidates only design the first. Covers memory taxonomies, the curation pipeline, and the leak vectors that fail the question.
Updated Aug 2026 · Grounded in real Forward Deployed Engineer interview loops and written to a senior-engineer editorial bar.
Memory is a retrieval problem plus a write-policy problem plus a privacy problem. Most candidates only design the first. Covers memory taxonomies, the curation pipeline, and the leak vectors that fail the question.
Lead with where the obvious approach breaks, because that is the judgment they are screening for — most candidates jump straight to the happy path and lose the room.
Then walk the failure back through the pipeline in order, naming the one metric the customer's exec sponsor actually cares about before you propose the fix.
