---
title: "Lazy / Just-in-Time Retrieval · agent retrieval pattern · Agent Fieldbook"
url: https://agentfieldbook.org/memory/retrieval/lazy-jit/
description: "Defer fetching; load memory only when the current task signals it is relevant."
section: "Memory · Retrieval"
source: Agent Fieldbook — generated from the published page
---

# Lazy / Just-in-Time Retrieval

Defer fetching; load memory only when the current task signals it is relevant.

Verified against [anthropic.com](https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/effective-context-engineering-for-ai-agents)

- [anthropic.com](https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/effective-context-engineering-for-ai-agents)

## How it works

## At a glance

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Stage | Retrieval |
| Phase | Read |
| Used by | Letta (archival paging)· Claude agent context engineering |

## Trade-off

Risk of missing context if the relevance trigger misfires; added round-trips.

## Basis

## Verified against

- [https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/effective-context-engineering-for-ai-agents](https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/effective-context-engineering-for-ai-agents)

The corpus does not rewrite vendor documentation. Where copy is quoted verbatim it is marked as such and attributed to its source.