Definition
Session State is the persistent data structure used to maintain conversational context, retrieved document history, and intermediate reasoning steps across multiple turns of an interaction. It enables AI agents to resolve anaphoric references (e.g., 'it' or 'that') and allows RAG pipelines to refine queries based on prior information without re-sending the entire history in every raw prompt.
Distinguishes between stateless REST API calls and stateful conversational memory within an agentic loop.
"A project manager's running logbook that records every decision made during a meeting to ensure the next task builds on previous work rather than starting from scratch."
- Short-term Memory(Component)
- Checkpointing(Prerequisite)
- Context Window(Constraint)
- State Management(Architectural Pattern)
Conceptual Overview
Session State is the persistent data structure used to maintain conversational context, retrieved document history, and intermediate reasoning steps across multiple turns of an interaction. It enables AI agents to resolve anaphoric references (e.g., 'it' or 'that') and allows RAG pipelines to refine queries based on prior information without re-sending the entire history in every raw prompt.
Disambiguation
Distinguishes between stateless REST API calls and stateful conversational memory within an agentic loop.
Visual Analog
A project manager's running logbook that records every decision made during a meeting to ensure the next task builds on previous work rather than starting from scratch.