openclaw/docs/cli/memory.md

summary, read_when, title, doc-schema-version

summary	read_when	title	doc-schema-version
CLI reference for `openclaw memory` (status/index/search/forget/promote/promote-explain/rem-harness/rem-backfill/session-backfill)	You want to index or search semantic memory You're debugging memory availability or indexing You want to promote recalled short-term memory into `MEMORY.md` You need to delete provenance-tracked memories derived from specific sessions or participants	Memory	1

openclaw memory

Manage semantic memory indexing, search, promotion into MEMORY.md, and provenance-based deletion. Provided by the bundled memory-core plugin, available when plugins.slots.memory selects memory-core (the default). Other memory plugins expose their own CLI namespaces.

Related: Memory concept, Dreaming, Memory config reference, Memory Wiki, wiki, Plugins.

memory status

openclaw memory status [--agent <id>] [--deep] [--index] [--fix] [--json] [--verbose]

Without --agent, runs for every agent in agents.entries; if no agent list is configured, falls back to the default agent.

Flag	Effect
--deep	Probe vector-store, embedding-provider, and semantic-search readiness (implies extra provider calls). Plain memory status stays fast and skips this; a complete persisted index is shown as indexed (unprobed), while unknown vector/semantic state means it was not probed.
--index	Reindex if the store is dirty. Implies --deep.
--fix	Repair stale recall locks and normalize promotion metadata.
--json	Print JSON.
--verbose	Emit detailed per-phase logs.

If the Dreaming line stays off even with dreaming.enabled: true, or scheduled sweeps never seem to run, the managed dreaming cron depends on the default agent's heartbeat firing to trigger reconciliation. See Dreaming for scheduling details.

Status also lists any extra search paths from memory.search.extraPaths. For providers that discover their default model at initialization, plain status defers model identity checks until that model is known. Use --deep to initialize the provider and verify the model and provider settings against the existing index.

memory index

openclaw memory index [--agent <id>] [--force] [--verbose]

Same per-agent scoping as status. --force runs a full reindex instead of an incremental one. --verbose prints per-agent provider, model, sources, and extra-path details before showing indexing progress. The completion message reports the indexed file count. An empty corpus is a successful no-op: the command reports the resolved workspace path and that nothing was indexed, and leaves the missing memory/ directory for the first memory write to create. Internal dreaming-narrative, cron, and heartbeat session transcripts are excluded from indexing, including retained compressed narrative archives whose original sessions are no longer active. Sessions previously selected by memory forget also remain excluded. --force removes stale index records for both groups without reindexing their retained transcripts. Ordinary retained, reset, and deleted user-session archives remain eligible until explicitly targeted.

memory search

openclaw memory search [query] [--query <text>] [--agent <id>] [--max-results <n>] [--min-score <n>] [--json]

• Query: positional [query] or --query <text>. If both are set, --query wins. If neither is set, the command errors.
• --agent <id>: defaults to the default agent (not the full agent list).
• --max-results <n>: cap result count (positive integer).
• --min-score <n>: filter out matches below this score.

If the index remains dirty after the bounded search-time refresh, human output warns that matches may be incomplete. With --json, the response adds stale: true, plus warning and action fields describing how to rebuild the index. Treat an empty results array as authoritative only when stale is absent.

memory forget

Remove identifiable memory artifacts derived from selected sessions and record those sessions as forgotten in one agent's store. See Memory provenance and deletion for the relationship between lineage, admission policy, and deletion coverage.

This command deletes immediately unless `--dry-run` is set. There is no confirmation prompt or `--apply` flag. Source session transcripts are retained.

Start with a preview:

openclaw memory forget --agent <agent-id> --session <id-or-key> --dry-run --json
openclaw memory forget --agent <agent-id> --hook-source gmail --dry-run --json
openclaw memory forget --agent <agent-id> --participant <actor-id> --dry-run --json

After checking the report, repeat the intended command without --dry-run.

Flag	Effect
--agent <id>	Select one agent. Defaults to the default agent, not all agents.
--session <id-or-key>	Select by session ID or key; repeatable.
--hook-source <source>	Select live sessions with this recorded external-content hook source; repeatable.
--participant <actor-id>	Select live sessions with this recorded participant actor ID; repeatable.
--since <date>	Include sessions created on or after the date. Use an ISO timestamp with a timezone for an unambiguous cutoff.
--dry-run	Compute a report without changing memory files, indexes, plugin state, or forgotten-session records.
--json	Print the full report as JSON.

Session selection

At least one selector is required. Repeated values and different selector types combine with OR: a session matching any selector is selected, subject to --since. Selectors match recorded identifiers, not names or text in messages. A participant selector selects the whole session, including other participants' contributions.

Explicit IDs and keys resolve against live sessions and retained archives. The report labels each result live, archived, or unresolved. An unresolved explicit value is recorded literally as a session ID for future exclusion; it does not prove that the requested session was found. IDs match exactly and case-sensitively, including when matching retained archive names. An abbreviation does not select a longer session ID.

Hook-source and participant selectors require live metadata; archived-only records do not retain those facts. Select those archives by full ID or key. --since uses the live session's creation time or the archive's creation time, not individual message timestamps. Unresolved explicit IDs have no timestamp and remain selected.

Read the report

Field	Meaning
agentId, dryRun	Store selected and whether this was a preview.
sessionIds, sessionResolutions	Selected IDs and how each resolved; a resolution may also include sessionKey.
entryKeys	Entry keys with at least one origin in the selected sessions.
mixedLineageEntryKeys	Selected entries that also have unselected origins; they are removed whole.
untargetableEntryKeys	Promotion markers found without origin rows in this agent's store. This does not enumerate unmarked prose.
curatedWrites	Files to review, with relativePath and observedAt (Unix milliseconds). Includes supported recorded write attempts, which may not have succeeded.
artifacts	Counts of matching files, entries, lines, and store rows described below.
refusals	Reserved report list; currently empty. An empty list does not establish complete deletion coverage.

Preview and apply use the same matching logic, but each reads current state; a preview is not an immutable plan or a lock on subsequent writes. Apply coordinates with the memory plugin's staging and file mutations. Indexing discards stale results instead of restoring purged chunks or cached embeddings; rerun an index command that reports a source change. Direct agent edits and external writers do not share that lock, so pause them during a sensitive cleanup. Rerun the preview afterward. An empty selection or zero counts do not prove that no related data remains.

Artifacts removed

The purge removes matching promotion-marker entries and session-reference sections from scanned memory files, selected session-corpus lines, and selected-session transcript index chunks. It clears associated full-text and vector rows, cached embeddings, matching short-term state, ingestion seen-hash scopes, and origin rows. Matching content is scrubbed from dreaming rewrite backups, rather than deleting every backup.

It also clears stale index records for internal dreaming-narrative, cron, or heartbeat sessions when the selection is nonempty. Index cleanup can therefore include more than the selected sessions, and all chunks from a changed memory file may be invalidated for later reindexing.

The artifacts counters are:

• memoryFiles, memoryEntries, memoryLines: changed memory files, removed marked entries or session-reference sections, and extra whole lines containing exact selected corpus snippets.
• sessionCorpusFiles, sessionCorpusLines: changed corpus files and removed corpus lines.
• indexChunks, indexSources, ftsRows, vectorRows, embeddingCacheRows: removed index and cache records.
• shortTermEntries, seenHashScopes, backups, originRows: removed short-term entries and deduplication scopes, rewritten backup records, and deleted source-origin rows.

Entries with mixed lineage are deleted whole; the command does not rewrite them to preserve only unselected contributions. Surviving sources may support new entries later, but regeneration is not guaranteed.

Readmission and retained data

A real purge records the selected session IDs as forgotten in the agent's SQLite database before removing artifacts. Automatic dreaming ingestion, memory session-backfill, and transcript indexing, including memory index --force, check those records. Automatic ingestion records the reason forgotten. Repeating the purge does not remove the exclusion, and removing an admission-policy rule does not undo it. Future sessions with new IDs are not excluded by a previous purge.

Exact corpus quotations in dream diaries such as DREAMS.md and memory/dreaming/**/*.md can be removed as whole lines. Untracked paraphrases cannot be reliably attributed and remain.

A curatedWrites record alone does not delete a file or its freeform edits. The latest file-level write-observer record and supported write, edit, and apply_patch calls in retained transcripts identify files to review. This is not a complete audit of shell writes or external editors. A reported file may still be changed by the separate marker, session-reference, or exact-quotation cleanup.

Entries staged before source-session tracking may lack origin rows and remain after a purge; review them separately. Current session backfill preserves origins, but does not reconstruct missing historical lineage. `untargetableEntryKeys` does not enumerate every untracked candidate or memory.

Source transcripts, retained archives, other agents' indexes, exports, and external backups also require separate review. In particular, session deletion ordinarily retains a deleted-transcript archive; it is not an erasure of every conversation copy.

memory promote

Rank short-term candidates from memory/YYYY-MM-DD.md and optionally append top entries to MEMORY.md.

openclaw memory promote [--agent <id>] [--limit <n>] [--min-score <n>] \
  [--min-recall-count <n>] [--min-unique-queries <n>] [--apply] [--include-promoted] [--json]

Flag	Default	Effect
--limit <n>		Max candidates to return/apply.
--min-score <n>	0.75	Minimum weighted promotion score.
--min-recall-count <n>	3	Minimum recall count required.
--min-unique-queries <n>	3	Minimum distinct query count required.
--apply	preview only	Append selected candidates to MEMORY.md and mark them promoted.
--include-promoted		Include candidates already promoted in previous cycles.
--json		Print JSON.

The CLI and scheduled dreaming sweep share the deep-phase defaults below. Explicit CLI flags override them for a one-off manual run.

Ranking signals: recall frequency, retrieval relevance, query diversity, temporal recency, cross-day consolidation, and derived concept richness, drawn from both memory recalls and daily-ingestion passes, plus a light/REM phase reinforcement boost for repeated dreaming revisits. Before writing, promotion re-reads the live daily note, so edits or deletions to short-term snippets since ranking are respected instead of promoting from a stale snapshot.

memory promote-explain

Explain one promotion candidate's score breakdown.

openclaw memory promote-explain <selector> [--agent <id>] [--include-promoted] [--json]

<selector> matches a candidate's key (exact or substring), path, or snippet text.

memory rem-harness

Preview REM reflections, candidate truths, and deep-phase promotion output without writing anything.

openclaw memory rem-harness [--agent <id>] [--path <file-or-dir>] [--grounded] [--include-promoted] [--json]

• --path <file-or-dir>: seed the harness from historical YYYY-MM-DD.md daily files instead of the live workspace.
• --grounded: also render a grounded What Happened / Reflections / Possible Lasting Updates preview from the historical notes.

memory rem-backfill

Write grounded historical REM summaries into DREAMS.md for UI review. Reversible.

openclaw memory rem-backfill --path <file-or-dir> [--agent <id>] [--stage-short-term] [--json]
openclaw memory rem-backfill --rollback [--rollback-short-term] [--json]

• --path <file-or-dir>: required unless --rollback/--rollback-short-term is set. Historical daily memory file(s) or directory to backfill from.
• --stage-short-term: also seed grounded durable candidates into the live short-term promotion store so the normal deep phase can rank them.
• --rollback: remove previously written grounded diary entries from DREAMS.md.
• --rollback-short-term: remove previously staged grounded short-term candidates.

memory session-backfill

Distill retained session history into grounded short-term candidates. It shares transcript trust classification, admission policy, and corpus storage with dreaming. Staged candidates retain every contributing session's origin so memory forget can select them later. Configured exclusions apply in preview, REM, and apply modes; forgotten sessions remain excluded in every mode. The default is a read-only preview, ordered from the oldest unprocessed day to the newest.

openclaw memory session-backfill --agent <id> [--from YYYY-MM-DD] [--to YYYY-MM-DD] \
  [--limit-days <n>] [--archive-files <path...>] [--rem | --apply] [--json]
openclaw memory session-backfill --agent <id> --rollback [--json]

Flag	Default	Effect
--from YYYY-MM-DD		Include messages on or after this day in the dreaming timezone.
--to YYYY-MM-DD		Include messages on or before this day in the dreaming timezone.
--limit-days <n>	92	Process at most this many hash-untracked days, oldest first.
--archive-files <path...>		Also inspect foreign transcript files as untrusted input; embedded owner metadata is not accepted.
--rem		Write deterministic grounded per-day previews to DREAMS.md only.
--apply	preview only	Drain all bounded batches, stage trusted candidates, and write reversible DREAMS.md diary blocks.
--rollback		Remove all grounded backfill candidates and shared backfill diary blocks, including rem-backfill artifacts.
--json		Print machine-readable per-day counts and top candidates.

The command reads the selected agent's canonical session store, including retained SQLite transcript identities from session rotation. It uses the same tracked message hashes and per-run caps as live session ingestion, so repeated --apply runs skip already ingested messages. Owner and agent lines from the canonical store are eligible; tool output, web or non-owner input, and turns without trustworthy owner provenance are excluded. Foreign archive files have no authenticated owner-provenance contract, so their embedded ownership fields remain untrusted and cannot be staged. Sessions previously purged with memory forget remain durably excluded, including when their original transcripts still exist or their tracked hashes were cleared.

--apply drains the selected history to completion in one invocation while keeping each bounded batch in its own transaction. Human and JSON output report per-batch progress plus total batches, candidates, and staged entries. A successful apply followed immediately by preview therefore reports zero new candidates. It writes only the session corpus under memory/.dreams/, short-term staging state, and reversible diary entries in DREAMS.md. It never writes MEMORY.md or USER.md; durable promotion remains a separate memory promote or dreaming decision. --rem and --apply are mutually exclusive.

Backfill rollback is intentionally shared with memory rem-backfill: both commands use the same grounded-only staging class and diary markers. Run session-backfill --rollback only when you intend to clear both commands' grounded backfill artifacts from that workspace. Rollback also removes the tracked hashes added by session backfill and rewinds the affected transcript cursors, so surviving eligible candidates can be previewed and applied again. Rollback does not remove forgotten-session records or readmit purged sessions.

Dreaming

Dreaming is the background memory consolidation system with three cooperative phases, run in order on one schedule: light (sort/stage short-term material), REM (reflect and surface themes), deep (promote durable facts into MEMORY.md). Only deep writes to MEMORY.md.

• Enable with plugins.entries.memory-core.config.dreaming.enabled: true (default true); memory-core auto-manages the sweep cron job, no manual openclaw cron add required.
• Toggle from chat with /dreaming on|off; inspect with /dreaming status (or /dreaming//dreaming help). on/off requires channel owner status or gateway operator.admin; status and help stay available to anyone who can invoke the command.
• Human-readable phase output goes to DREAMS.md (or an existing dreams.md). By default (dreaming.storage.mode: "separate") each phase also writes a standalone report to memory/dreaming/<phase>/YYYY-MM-DD.md; set mode: "inline" to fold reports into the daily memory file instead, or "both" for both.
• Scheduled and manual memory promote runs share the same deep-phase ranking signals and default thresholds; explicit CLI flags remain one-run overrides.
• Scheduled runs fan out across every configured agent's memory workspace.

Scheduled defaults (plugins.entries.memory-core.config.dreaming):

Key	Default
frequency	0 3 * * *
phases.deep.minScore	0.75
phases.deep.minRecallCount	3
phases.deep.minUniqueQueries	3
phases.deep.recencyHalfLifeDays	14
phases.deep.maxAgeDays	30
phases.deep.maxPromotedSnippetTokens	160

{
  "plugins": {
    "entries": {
      "memory-core": {
        "config": {
          "dreaming": {
            "enabled": true
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Full key list and phase details: Dreaming, Memory config reference.

SecretRef gateway dependency

If active memory remote API key fields are configured as SecretRefs, memory commands resolve them from the active gateway snapshot; if the gateway is unavailable, the command fails fast. This requires a gateway supporting the secrets.resolve method; older gateways return an unknown-method error.

Related

• CLI reference
• Memory overview