Consolidation Pass
A scheduled reflective pass over the memory store: merge duplicates, correct or delete stale facts, promote recurring observations, and prune the index. Maintenance as a first-class operation.
When to use
Any memory system old enough to have accumulated errors, which is every memory system.
Specification
| Memory type | procedural |
|---|---|
| Storage | operates on the existing store, whatever it is |
| Retrieval | n/a: this pattern is an operation, not a store |
| Update method | scheduled agent- or human-run pass with edit and delete authority |
| Decay / staleness handling | This pattern IS the staleness handling for stores that lack it natively; cadence should match the environment's rate of change. |
| Risk level / maturity | medium / emerging |
Privacy and safety
The pass has write authority over all memory; it should log its changes like any privileged operation.
Failure modes
- Never scheduled, which is the default
- Over-aggressive pruning deleting rare-but-critical facts
- Consolidation errors compounding silently without a change log
Assessment
The difference between memory systems that compound and ones that rot. Every other memory pattern on this site lists a failure mode this pass exists to catch.
Evaluation method: Index size trend, duplicate rate, and staleness-audit hit rate, before versus after.