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Sessions

openclaw sessions

Section titled “openclaw sessions”

List stored conversation sessions.

Session lists are not channel/provider liveness checks. They show persisted conversation rows from session stores. A quiet Discord, Slack, Telegram, or other channel can reconnect successfully without creating a new session row until a message is processed. Use openclaw channels status --probe, openclaw status --deep, or openclaw health --verbose when you need live channel connectivity.

openclaw sessions and Gateway sessions.list responses are bounded by default so large long-lived stores cannot monopolize the CLI process or Gateway event loop. The CLI returns the newest 100 sessions by default; pass --limit <n> for a smaller/larger window or --limit all when you intentionally need the full store. JSON responses include totalCount, limitApplied, and hasMore when callers need to show that more rows exist.

RPC clients can pass configuredAgentsOnly: true to keep the broad combined discovery source but return only rows for agents currently present in config. Control UI uses that mode by default so deleted or disk-only agent stores do not reappear in the Sessions view.

Terminal window
openclaw sessions
openclaw sessions --agent work
openclaw sessions --all-agents
openclaw sessions --active 120
openclaw sessions --limit 25
openclaw sessions --verbose
openclaw sessions --json

Scope selection:

  • default: configured default agent store
  • --verbose: verbose logging
  • --agent <id>: one configured agent store
  • --all-agents: aggregate all configured agent stores
  • --store <path>: explicit store path (cannot be combined with --agent or --all-agents)
  • --limit <n|all>: max rows to output (default 100; all restores full output)

Export a trajectory bundle for a stored session:

Terminal window
openclaw sessions export-trajectory --session-key "agent:main:telegram:direct:123" --workspace .
openclaw sessions export-trajectory --session-key "agent:main:telegram:direct:123" --output bug-123 --json

This is the command path used by the /export-trajectory slash command after the owner approves the exec request. The output directory is always resolved inside .openclaw/trajectory-exports/ under the selected workspace.

openclaw sessions --all-agents reads configured agent stores. Gateway and ACP session discovery are broader: they also include disk-only stores found under the default agents/ root or a templated session.store root. Those discovered stores must resolve to regular sessions.json files inside the agent root; symlinks and out-of-root paths are skipped.

JSON examples:

openclaw sessions --all-agents --json:

{
  "path": null,
  "stores": [
    { "agentId": "main", "path": "/home/user/.openclaw/agents/main/sessions/sessions.json" },
    { "agentId": "work", "path": "/home/user/.openclaw/agents/work/sessions/sessions.json" }
  ],
  "allAgents": true,
  "count": 2,
  "totalCount": 2,
  "limitApplied": 100,
  "hasMore": false,
  "activeMinutes": null,
  "sessions": [
    { "agentId": "main", "key": "agent:main:main", "model": "gpt-5" },
    { "agentId": "work", "key": "agent:work:main", "model": "claude-opus-4-6" }
  ]
}

Cleanup maintenance

Section titled “Cleanup maintenance”

Run maintenance now (instead of waiting for the next write cycle):

Terminal window
openclaw sessions cleanup --dry-run
openclaw sessions cleanup --agent work --dry-run
openclaw sessions cleanup --all-agents --dry-run
openclaw sessions cleanup --enforce
openclaw sessions cleanup --enforce --active-key "agent:main:telegram:direct:123"
openclaw sessions cleanup --dry-run --fix-dm-scope
openclaw sessions cleanup --json

openclaw sessions cleanup uses session.maintenance settings from config:

  • Scope note: openclaw sessions cleanup maintains session stores, transcripts, and trajectory sidecars. It does not prune cron run logs (cron/runs/<jobId>.jsonl), which are managed by cron.runLog.maxBytes and cron.runLog.keepLines in Cron configuration and explained in Cron maintenance.

  • Cleanup also prunes unreferenced primary transcripts, compaction checkpoints, and trajectory sidecars older than session.maintenance.pruneAfter; files still referenced by sessions.json are preserved.

  • --dry-run: preview how many entries would be pruned/capped without writing.

    • In text mode, dry-run prints a per-session action table (Action, Key, Age, Model, Flags) so you can see what would be kept vs removed.

  • --enforce: apply maintenance even when session.maintenance.mode is warn.

  • --fix-missing: remove entries whose transcript files are missing, even if they would not normally age/count out yet.

  • --fix-dm-scope: when session.dmScope is main, retire stale peer-keyed direct-DM rows left behind by earlier per-peer, per-channel-peer, or per-account-channel-peer routing. Use --dry-run first; applying the cleanup removes those rows from sessions.json and preserves their transcripts as deleted archives.

  • --active-key <key>: protect a specific active key from disk-budget eviction. Durable external conversation pointers, such as group sessions and thread-scoped chat sessions, are also kept by age/count/disk-budget maintenance.

  • --agent <id>: run cleanup for one configured agent store.

  • --all-agents: run cleanup for all configured agent stores.

  • --store <path>: run against a specific sessions.json file.

  • --json: print a JSON summary. With --all-agents, output includes one summary per store.

When a Gateway is reachable, non-dry-run cleanup for configured agent stores is sent through the Gateway so it shares the same session-store writer as runtime traffic. Use --store <path> for explicit offline repair of a store file.

openclaw sessions cleanup --all-agents --dry-run --json:

{
  "allAgents": true,
  "mode": "warn",
  "dryRun": true,
  "stores": [
    {
      "agentId": "main",
      "storePath": "/home/user/.openclaw/agents/main/sessions/sessions.json",
      "beforeCount": 120,
      "afterCount": 80,
      "missing": 0,
      "dmScopeRetired": 0,
      "pruned": 40,
      "capped": 0
    },
    {
      "agentId": "work",
      "storePath": "/home/user/.openclaw/agents/work/sessions/sessions.json",
      "beforeCount": 18,
      "afterCount": 18,
      "missing": 0,
      "dmScopeRetired": 0,
      "pruned": 0,
      "capped": 0
    }
  ]
}

Related:

Section titled “Related”