# Summary strategy
<a name="summary-strategy"></a>

The `SummaryStrategy` is responsible for generating condensed, real-time summaries of conversations within a single session. It captures key topics, main tasks, and decisions, providing a high-level overview of the dialogue.

 **Steps in the strategy** 

The summary strategy includes the following steps:
+  **Consolidation** – Determines whether to write useful information to a new record or an existing record.

 **Strategy output** 

The summary strategy returns XML-formatted output, where each `<topic>` tag represents a distinct area of the user’s memory. XML lets multiple topics to be captured and organized in a single summary while preserving clarity.

A single session can have multiple summary chunks, each representing a portion of the conversation. Together, these chunks form the complete summary for the entire session.

These summary chunks can be retrieved using the [ListMemoryRecords](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/bedrock-agentcore/latest/APIReference/API_ListMemoryRecords.html) operation with namespace filter, or you can also perform semantic search over the summary chunks using the [RetrieveMemoryRecords](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/bedrock-agentcore/latest/APIReference/API_RetrieveMemoryRecords.html) operation to retrieve only the relevant summary chunks for your query.

 **Examples of insights captured by this strategy include:** 
+ A summary of a support interaction, such as "The user reported an issue with order \$1XYZ-123 , and the agent initiated a replacement."
+ The outcome of a planning session, like "The team agreed to move the project deadline to Friday."

By referencing this summary, an agent can quickly recall the context of a long or complex conversation without needing to re-process the entire history. This is essential for maintaining conversational flow and for efficiently managing the context window of the foundation model.

 **Default namespace** 

 `/strategy/{memoryStrategyId}/actor/{actorId}/session/{sessionId}/` 

**Note**  
 `sessionId` is a required parameter for summary namespace since summaries are generated and maintained at session level.

**Topics**
+ [System prompt for summary strategy](memory-summary-prompt.md)