# Sleep-Time Compute

> Letting models think during downtime - background agents use idle time to process information and rewrite their memory state between tasks.

- Category: Context & Memory
- Stage: Emerging
- Also called: Sleep time compute, Dreaming (Letta)
- Canonical: https://www.joelcsaji.com/ai-dictionary/sleep-time-compute

## Plain English

The agent does its filing at night so the next conversation starts with a tidy desk instead of a replay.

## Example

After each support chat ends, a sleep-time agent reorganizes the transcript into durable customer memory - preferences, open issues - so the next session starts curated.

## Why it matters

It reframes latency as a schedulable resource: memory consolidation and pre-computing likely next requests move out of the user-waiting window entirely.

## Related

- [Memory](https://www.joelcsaji.com/ai-dictionary/memory)
- [Background Mode](https://www.joelcsaji.com/ai-dictionary/background-mode)
- [Episodic Memory](https://www.joelcsaji.com/ai-dictionary/episodic-memory)

## Sources

- [Letta: Sleep-time Compute](https://www.letta.com/blog/sleep-time-compute/)