How does a workflow agent remember what happened in previous steps?

Workflow agents maintain full conversation history within a run, so context from earlier steps is always available when the workflow resumes after any pause.

When a workflow pauses and then resumes—whether waiting for a ticket reply, an approval, or a sub-agent to finish—the agent picks up exactly where it left off, with full context of everything that happened before.

Within a single run

Every action the agent takes is recorded in its conversation history. When the workflow resumes after a pause:

The agent sees everything it already did and reasoned about.
It sees the new information that arrived (the ticket reply, the approval decision, the sub-agent's result).
It continues with this combined context—there is no need to repeat information the agent already collected.

Workflow memory across runs

When workflow memory is enabled for an agent step, the agent can also access a persistent memory of key facts it recorded in previous executions of the same workflow. This is useful when:

A recurring workflow should know it has already contacted a person this quarter and not contact them again.
A follow-up run should not repeat steps that succeeded last time.
You want the agent to accumulate knowledge about an ongoing process over multiple scheduled runs.

Example

A monthly compliance check workflow runs with workflow memory enabled. On the January run, the agent notes that Employee A completed training and records this in memory. When the February run fires, the agent sees this record and skips re-notifying Employee A—focusing only on employees who are still outstanding.

Guardrails

Memory is stored per workflow definition and is shared across all executions of that workflow—not per individual user.
Write instructions that tell the agent when to record something to memory and when to check existing memory before taking an action.
Workflow memory is not a substitute for your system of record (HRIS, ticketing). Use it to avoid duplicate outreach, not to store authoritative employee data.
If memory becomes stale or incorrect, account owners can clear it from the workflow settings page.