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Theory & Scope

Non-normative. This page explains the theory of memory OMIR R1 encodes and states the boundaries of that theory. It adds no conformance requirements beyond those in Conformance; the RFC-2119 keywords below restate consumer guidance already implied by the resource semantics. It is the conceptual companion to Memory Semantics, which defines how individual fields behave over time.

The theory OMIR encodes

OMIR R1 standardizes the state a memory algorithm reads and writes, not the algorithm (Design Principles §6). The state it makes first-class — calibrated belief, half-life decay with anchoring, consolidation tiers, Hebbian edge strength, entity salience, bi-temporal timestamps, prospective intentions, and source credibility — places OMIR in a specific, well-established tradition: the rational analysis of memory, in which a memory’s strength tracks the statistics of the environment (recency and frequency predict future need), realized in cognitive architectures such as ACT-R and complemented by the hippocampal/neocortical picture of consolidation.

Naming the lineage matters because “state, not algorithm” does not make the choice of state neutral. The fields OMIR blesses are an opinionated, defensible theory of what memory is. This page states the boundaries of that theory so they read as deliberate design positions, not as omissions.

Scope: declarative memory

OMIR R1 models declarative memory — the episodic and semantic memory of facts, experiences, and their relationships. In the common taxonomy of agent memory (a working store plus long-term episodic, semantic, and procedural memory), R1 covers the episodic and semantic long-term store, with tier standing in for a working/activation notion.

The following are out of scope in R1 and have no first-class representation:

  • Procedural / skill memory — learned tool-use policies, workflows, and macros.
  • Parametric memory — knowledge held in model weights, adapters (e.g. LoRA), or fine-tunes.
  • Activation / KV-cache memory — transient in-context state below the record level.
  • Priming and other implicit (non-declarative) memory.

Such state MAY be carried opaquely (inside content, or under extension[]), but it is not interpretable by a generic consumer and is not what R1 standardizes. A later release MAY introduce first-class resources for these systems; per Design Principles §4 they would start low on the OMM and earn their level through independent implementation. Until then, “OMIR memory” means declarative memory — stated here so adopters self-select rather than discover the boundary after building an adapter.

State, not dynamics — and the snapshot it implies

Because OMIR records state and not the algorithm that evolves it, every time-dependent value is a snapshot as of its timestamp. A decay block, an Entity.salience, a Relationship.strength, and the retrievability they feed are all functions of time, frozen at the moment of export. R1 defines no procedure for aging them forward.

A consumer SHOULD treat these values as valid as of their associated timestamp (decay.lastAccess, Entity.lastSeenAt, Relationship.validAt, meta.lastUpdated) and MAY recompute them under its own decay / salience / strength model on import. A consumer MUST NOT assume an exported retrievability, salience, or strength is current at read time. This is the price of encoding-neutral, algorithm-free portability: the record survives the hand-off; the dynamics are reconstructed by the importer.

Stored scalars are producer-relative

The normalized scores OMIR carries — importance, Entity.salience, Relationship.strength, provenance.credibility, and confidence.calibrated — are producer-asserted and producer-normalized. They are comparable within one producer’s output, where they share a normalization regime, and are not guaranteed comparable across producers.

R1 defines no cross-producer scale for these fields. Consequently:

  • A consumer MUST NOT assume two producers’ scalars share a scale: one store’s importance: 0.8 need not mean what another store’s 0.8 means.
  • A consumer that ranks or merges records from more than one producer SHOULD renormalize per producer (keyed by meta.source) rather than compare raw values.
  • For belief specifically, prefer the evidence-bearing confidence.alpha / beta over the derived calibrated when comparing or merging across producers (Memory Semantics §1).

This reflects a fact about memory the literature is explicit on: salience and relevance are cue-dependent and emergent at retrieval, not context-free stored properties. OMIR must freeze them into stored scalars to serialize them at all; this section bounds what that freezing does and does not guarantee. A future release MAY add an optional normalizationRef so cross-producer comparability becomes detectable rather than assumed (see Toward a Global Standard).

Records, not reconstructions

Human recall is reconstructive: a trace is rebuilt, and often altered, each time it is retrieved. OMIR deliberately does not model this. A MemoryRecord is a stable, auditable record with an explicit version counter and temporal invalidation (validUntil, Relationship.invalidatedAt), not a trace that reconsolidates on access. Accessing a record updates its retrievability (decay.lastAccess, decay.accessCount); it does not rewrite its content.

This is a deliberate trade: OMIR exchanges reconstructive fidelity for auditability, diffability, and non-confabulation — properties a portable, archivable, hand-it-between-vendors format needs and a reconstructive store cannot offer. It also means OMIR’s “forgetting” is decay of retrievability, never deletion of data; governance-driven deletion and retention are a separate concern, deferred to a future governance vocabulary (see Toward a Global Standard).

These are bounds, not gaps

Each boundary above is a stated position, not an oversight. Several have candidate generalizations already named in Toward a Global Standard — open vocabularies, identity and multi-agent memory, a richer temporal model, modality and neutral embeddings, and a governance / retention vocabulary. They enter, if at all, through the RFC + ballot process at low OMM. R1’s contract is the narrower, honest one: a portable serialization of declarative memory state.