arXiv:2611.08718v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Conversational recommender systems often treat user sessions in isolation, limiting their ability to capture how user intent evolves over time. While large language models (LLMs) have improved semantic understanding, they are typically used as isolated components, without addressing how memory, retrieval, and decision-making should be integrated at the system level. In this work, we propose a memory-aware multi-agent architecture for conversational recommendation, in which LLMs act as orchestration layers that coordinate intent refinement, query construction, and interaction flow. A key design principle is the integration of long-term memory as a first-class component, influencing both routing decisions and semantic query formation. We evaluate the system through cross-session memory experiments, multi-turn conversational simulations, and supervisor-driven interaction studies on the Amazon Reviews dataset. Results show that memory-enabled interactions recover up to 63\% of the gap toward explicit-query scenarios and prevent semantic degradation in extended dialogues. In addition, supervisory orchestration increases user acceptance by +28.9 percentage points, highlighting the importance of structured orchestration in guiding interaction and output quality. We also observe an exposure bottleneck between retrieved candidates and displayed recommendations. While LLM-reranking does not improve Hit@K, it consistently enhances semantic consistency and diversity. To capture these effects, we introduce the Semantic Consistency Score (SCS), a complementary evaluation measure. Overall, the results emphasize the importance of system-level design choices, suggesting that effective conversational recommendation benefits from explicit memory integration, orchestration, and evaluation beyond traditional ranking metrics.
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