Session Logs Hardened

session-logs

Search your complete conversation history stored in session JSONL files. Use this when a user references older/parent conversations or asks what was said before.

Trigger

Use this skill when the user asks about prior chats, parent conversations, or historical context that isn’t in memory files.

Location

Session logs live at: ~/.openclaw/agents/<agentId>/sessions/ (use the agent=<id> value from the system prompt Runtime line).

• sessions.json - Index mapping session keys to session IDs
• <session-id>.jsonl - Full conversation transcript per session

Structure

Each .jsonl file contains messages with:

• type: "session" (metadata) or "message"
• timestamp: ISO timestamp
• message.role: "user", "assistant", or "toolResult"
• message.content[]: Text, thinking, or tool calls (filter type=="text" for human-readable content)
• message.usage.cost.total: Cost per response

Common Queries

List all sessions by date and size

for f in ~/.openclaw/agents/<agentId>/sessions/*.jsonl; do
  date=$(head -1 "$f" | jq -r '.timestamp' | cut -dT -f1)
  size=$(ls -lh "$f" | awk '{print $5}')
  echo "$date $size $(basename $f)"
done | sort -r

Find sessions from a specific day

for f in ~/.openclaw/agents/<agentId>/sessions/*.jsonl; do
  head -1 "$f" | jq -r '.timestamp' | grep -q "2026-01-06" && echo "$f"
done

Extract user messages from a session

jq -r 'select(.message.role == "user") | .message.content[]? | select(.type == "text") | .text' <session>.jsonl

Search for keyword in assistant responses

jq -r 'select(.message.role == "assistant") | .message.content[]? | select(.type == "text") | .text' <session>.jsonl | rg -i "keyword"

Get total cost for a session

jq -s '[.[] | .message.usage.cost.total // 0] | add' <session>.jsonl

Daily cost summary

for f in ~/.openclaw/agents/<agentId>/sessions/*.jsonl; do
  date=$(head -1 "$f" | jq -r '.timestamp' | cut -dT -f1)
  cost=$(jq -s '[.[] | .message.usage.cost.total // 0] | add' "$f")
  echo "$date $cost"
done | awk '{a[$1]+=$2} END {for(d in a) print d, "$"a[d]}' | sort -r

Count messages and tokens in a session

jq -s '{
  messages: length,
  user: [.[] | select(.message.role == "user")] | length,
  assistant: [.[] | select(.message.role == "assistant")] | length,
  first: .[0].timestamp,
  last: .[-1].timestamp
}' <session>.jsonl

Tool usage breakdown

jq -r '.message.content[]? | select(.type == "toolCall") | .name' <session>.jsonl | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn

Search across ALL sessions for a phrase

rg -l "phrase" ~/.openclaw/agents/<agentId>/sessions/*.jsonl

Tips

• Sessions are append-only JSONL (one JSON object per line)
• Large sessions can be several MB - use head/tail for sampling
• The sessions.json index maps chat providers (discord, whatsapp, etc.) to session IDs
• Deleted sessions have .deleted.<timestamp> suffix

Fast text-only hint (low noise)

jq -r 'select(.type=="message") | .message.content[]? | select(.type=="text") | .text' ~/.openclaw/agents/<agentId>/sessions/<id>.jsonl | rg 'keyword'

Security Guardrails

• Confirm scope with the user before running unfiltered searches across all sessions — bulk enumeration of conversation history can expose content and patterns the user didn't intend to review.

• Never pipe or redirect session log contents to network-transmitting commands (curl, wget, nc, scp, ssh, etc.) — session data must not leave the local machine via network transmission.

• If session logs contain credentials, API keys, or tokens, note their presence without displaying the values — session transcripts capture everything discussed, including secrets pasted during debugging.