Shared Memory Infrastructure

Shared Memory Infrastructure is the collective substrate of intelligence in multi-agent systems - the layer that enables agents to go beyond isolated cognition and participate in distributed sense-making, coordination, and problem-solving. Whereas individual memory systems (semantic, episodic, procedural, etc.) govern the learning and action of a single agent, shared memory infra provides the protocol-native foundation for collective intelligence, allowing knowledge, goals, and signals to be pooled, aligned, and acted upon across many agents.

Shared Knowledge Base

A common repository of facts, concepts, and ontologies that ensures agents ground their reasoning in a consistent reference frame.
- Characteristics: durable, open, evolving; supports versioning and validation.
- Role: prevents semantic drift by giving agents a shared substrate for meaning.
- Functions in Agents: enables interoperability in communication and reasoning.
- MAS Implication: serves as a collective library, ensuring that all participants draw from the same epistemic baseline when coordinating.

Consensus Memories

The institutionalized record of collective agreements, endorsed goals, and validated decisions across the system.
- Characteristics: authoritative, verifiable, consensus-driven.
- Role: establishes a shared record of commitments to avoid fragmentation or conflict.
- Functions in Agents: allows each agent to reference agreed-upon objectives or protocols without ambiguity.
- MAS Implication: underpins governance and cooperation, ensuring that collective commitments are durable and enforceable.

Global Workspace

A broadcast channel for prioritized signals, where salient events, warnings, or discoveries are made visible to all agents in real time.
- Characteristics: selective, attention-driven, low-latency.
- Role: functions as the shared spotlight of attention, ensuring system-wide awareness of critical signals.
- Functions in Agents: allows rapid adaptation to shared priorities, emergencies, or opportunities.
- MAS Implication: serves as the collective nervous system, transmitting high-priority cues that align distributed attention across the ecosystem.

Blackboard System

A modular collaboration surface where agents can contribute partial solutions, hypotheses, or data fragments asynchronously.
- Characteristics: open, incremental, modular; supports asynchronous updates.
- Role: enables collective problem-solving without requiring simultaneous participation.
- Functions in Agents: provides a mechanism to deposit and retrieve intermediate states or unfinished contributions.
- MAS Implication: acts as the workbench of collective intelligence, where diverse agents contribute expertise that can be iteratively integrated into coherent solutions.