MIT CSAIL's JAZ: minimalist agent with one 'invoke' primitive beats MemGPT at half the cost
omarsar0 · x · 2026-09-26
A new MIT CSAIL paper presents JAZ, a minimal agent framework with a single primitive: invoke. The LLM writes code, can call invoke recursively, and sees all its inputs and history as variables in the code environment.
Key results:
- With prompting only and no memory subsystem, it beats Letta (MemGPT) by 8% at half the cost on the recall-heavy part of StuLife
- On AppWorld it beats ACE, a self-improvement method, by 4% at lower cost
The core idea: memory and self-improvement are usually built as separate subsystems, but here both are code the agent writes inside the loop, with hooks enforcing constraints and monitoring. Strong empirical support for keeping agent harnesses minimal.
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