Agent memory: where it lives, when it expires, how it is deleted

You deleted the memory file. The agent still remembers. That is the first thing worth knowing about agent memory: the file you can see is rarely the thing the model reads. Behind it sits an index, and an index outlives its source unless something deletes both. Most writing about agent memory argues about retrieval quality. The questions that decide whether you can operate the system are duller: which store does the memory live in, what writes to it, when does it expire, and what is actually go