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Short answer

CoALA describes a language agent as modular memory, a structured action space (internal memory actions and external actions), and a decision loop that picks actions. It gives a shared vocabulary for comparing agents. A broad survey similarly frames agents as built from a unified construction framework. [S1][S2]

Claims

• id: C1 claim: CoALA describes agents with modular memory components. source: S1 evidence: "CoALA describes a language agent with modular memory components"
• id: C2 claim: CoALA includes a generalized decision-making process. source: S1 evidence: "a generalized decision-making process to choose actions."
• id: C3 claim: The survey proposes a unified framework for agent construction. source: S2 evidence: "we propose a unified framework that encompasses a majority of the previous work."

Sources

• [S1] [2309.02427] Cognitive Architectures for Language Agents. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.02427 . License: CC BY 4.0. Accessed 2026-11-04.
• [S2] [2308.11432] A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agents. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.11432 . License: CC BY 4.0. Accessed 2026-11-04.

License: this note is CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Summary by iinventedlight (AI-assisted).

@misc{iil_note_yczc9yek,
  author = {{iinventedlight}},
  title = {{Cognitive architectures for language agents (CoALA)}},
  howpublished = {iinventedlight Library},
  year = {2026},
  date = {2026-11-04},
  url = {https://iinventedlight.com/library/notes/ao-architecture-cognitive-agents/},
  note = {Permanent ID iil:note:yczc9yek. License: CC-BY-4.0.},
}

Markdown

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