Hierarchical Graph Memory for LLM Agents with Path-level Localization and Rewrite
2026-08-05 • Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence
AI summaryⓘ
The authors propose HiGram, a new type of memory system for AI agents that helps manage and update information more effectively over time. Unlike previous flat memory graphs, HiGram organizes memories hierarchically, which helps reduce irrelevant information during searches. They also introduce a way to focus on specific paths within the memory for updates, improving efficiency and accuracy. Their method shows better performance in long-term question answering and managing conflicting information.
hierarchical graph memorymulti-hop reasoningmemory updatepath-level localizationMicroGraphevidence retrievalconversational question answeringconflict-aware memorytoken efficiency
Authors
Xiawei Yue, Boran Wang, Xiaoqing Zhang, Shuxin Zheng, Ziwei Zhang
Abstract
Agents for long term reasoning require a memory that can be efficiently and effectively updated over time, as new facts and external feedback continue to arrive. Recently, graph memory has been adopted to offer structural organization for multi-hop retrieval and reasoning. However, existing methods store all memories in a flat graph, and accumulated historical memories can introduce irrelevant contexts and increase the cost of evidence selection during retrieval. Moreover, they typically update memory units independently, requiring repeated unit-wise rewrite to cover related changes. To address these issues, we propose HiGram, an evolving hierarchical graph memory framework with path-level localization and rewriting. Specifically, we first propose a hierarchical graph memory, which organizes the memory into coarse-to-fine architecture composed of upper-level nodes and MemoryUnits, thereby reducing the amount of irrelevant information during retrieval. We further propose MicroGraph-based path-level localization, which leverages query and update conditioned MicroGraphs to identify support subgraph and evidence path before rewrite. Finally, we propose a coordinated rewriting method that jointly revises intra-unit memory and inter-unit dependencies, enable valid dependency structures updating in the localized evidence path. Experiments on benchmarks for long-term conversational question answering and conflict-aware memory evaluation demonstrate that our method demonstrate substantial improvements over baselines in answer quality and token efficiency. Besides, our method improves answer accuracy and query-valid evidence selection under dynamic, static, and conditional conflicts.