Memory Has an Interface: From Facts to Accepted Actions

The same remembered facts can lead to different task outcomes depending on how they enter an agent's context and how its responses reach execution. We study this interface by removing reference-action facts from user requests and restoring byte-identical marked JSON either inline or through a historical assistant–tool exchange. Across 146 selected tasks and three models at one primary seed, historical delivery achieves 29.68% success versus 23.52% for inline delivery, a gain of 6.16 percentage points. A separate 59-task retail study with quantized Qwen3.6-27B reveals a distinction between proposing an action and having it accepted: all 25 first-response pairs with different native acceptance outcomes propose identical tool names and arguments. We then cross the delivery interface with the execution rule in 236 complete interactions. Native rules yield 1/59 inline and 6/59 historical successes; admitting schema-valid text-plus-tool responses to execution raises both totals to 56/59. Content controls further establish the value of correct facts through both interfaces, with model-dependent delivery contrasts. Together, these measurements identify message construction and response acceptance as consequential stages between selected facts and completed tasks, and provide a concrete framework for evaluating how agent memory becomes action.