Totally agree. Persistence is a huge part of what we usually mean by state. Nothing stops this from plugging into a real database when needed. But also, nothing stops us from rethinking what a database even is, especially in a world where LLMs have growing context windows and can carry more state internally. Maybe persistence doesn’t always have to mean "write to disk."
I’m not sure I understand the distinction between persistence and memory
In the context of LLMs memory can often mean a broadly defined, application-specific ability to detect, retain and re-use bits of useful context along the journey. In contrast to Persistence which is more like a DB with a schema and clear expectations, reliability, etc.