- In short
- Retrieval, persistent application state, and application-managed memory are three distinct context mechanisms that are commonly conflated. Retrieval augments the context window with knowledge fetched at query time from an external corpus. Persistent application state (order status, balances) is owned by the calling system and requires an explicit tool call. Summaries and memory layers are application-managed continuity, because the model has no native memory between calls; anything that persists does so only because the application stored and re-injected it.
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