Memory Tiering

Memory Tiering Skill 🧠⚖️

2026.4.10 Update: OpenClaw now has two native memory systems — Active Memory (runs before every reply) and Dreaming (nightly consolidation at 3 AM IL). This skill covers what they DON'T handle — see section below.

What Native Systems Now Cover (don't duplicate)

What This Skill Still Handles

• Manual pruning when MEMORY.md grows >200 lines
• Archiving old memory/daily/YYYY-MM-DD.md files (30-day retention)
• Force-promoting critical owner corrections immediately (don't wait for Dreaming)
• Graduation gate — reviewing and filtering dream promotions before they land in MEMORY.md
• Post-compaction reorganization
• Enforcing store boundaries: daily notes = raw-first log, MEMORY.md = durable rules only, project docs = project-scoped

The Three Tiers (for manual ops)

1. 🔥 HOT (memory/hot/HOT_MEMORY.md) — current session, active tasks
2. 🌡️ WARM (memory/warm/WARM_MEMORY.md) — stable preferences, configs
3. ❄️ COLD (MEMORY.md) — long-term, distilled, curated

Workflow: Organize-Memory (Manual / Post-Compaction)

Step 1: Check native systems first

openclaw memory status --deep   # see what Dreaming already promoted
/dreaming status                  # check last run

Step 2: Ingest & Audit

• Read MEMORY.md + last 7 memory/daily/YYYY-MM-DD.md files
• Identify Dead Context: completed tasks, resolved issues, stale facts

Step 3: Prune & Redistribute

• Remove stale COLD entries (if Dreaming already promoted better versions)
• Force-add critical owner corrections → MEMORY.md immediately (don't wait for Dreaming)
• Archive daily notes older than 30 days → memory/archive/YYYY-MM/

Step 4: Verify

• MEMORY.md should be <200 lines after cleanup
• Check DREAMS.md — are Dreaming's promotions accurate? Prune bad ones.

Progressive Context Compaction (inspired by Claude Code harness patterns)

Long sessions degrade quality as context fills. Apply progressive compression by conversation age:

Compression Layers (oldest → newest)

When to Apply

• Session exceeds 30 turns
• Context window pressure detected (tool responses getting truncated)
• After any /compact command

How to Apply (Manual)

1. Identify turn count in current session
2. For turns older than 30: summarize into a single "Session context so far" block
3. For turns 15-30: keep decisions and outcomes, drop tool output and exploration
4. Keep last 15 turns at full detail
5. Always preserve: owner corrections, final decisions, error causes

What Never Gets Compressed

• Owner corrections and preferences
• Permission decisions (approved/denied actions)
• Error root causes and fixes applied
• Active task state and pending items

Gap vs. Claude Code

Claude Code does this in the harness layer (code, not prompt). We currently rely on manual /compact and prompt-level instructions. Future improvement: move compaction logic into OpenClaw's session management layer so it runs automatically without consuming agent tokens.

Usage Trigger

• Trigger manually: "Run memory tiering" or when MEMORY.md >200 lines
• Trigger automatically after any /compact command

Dreaming Integration (OpenClaw 2026.4.9+)

Dreaming is already enabled (memory-core plugin, 0 3 * * * IL timezone).

What Dreaming does automatically:

• Light phase: ingests daily notes + session transcripts
• Deep phase: scores & promotes strong signals → MEMORY.md (weighted: relevance 0.30, frequency 0.24, recency 0.15)
• REM phase: extracts themes and patterns

Manual CLI for inspection/intervention:

openclaw memory status --deep          # what's queued for promotion
openclaw memory promote                # preview what would promote
openclaw memory promote --apply        # force apply now
openclaw memory promote-explain "term" # why something would/wouldn't promote
/dreaming status                        # last run summary

What still requires manual action:

• Owner corrections → MEMORY.md immediately (don't wait for Dreaming)
• Critical session-startup rules → MEMORY.md manually
• Pruning bad/stale Dreaming promotions → manual cleanup
• MEMORY.md growing >200 lines → prune manually

Graduation Gate (inspired by agentic-stack)

Dreaming stages candidates. Nothing graduates to MEMORY.md without passing this gate:

Minimum Requirements

• Score >= 0.70 (weighted relevance + frequency + recency)
• Recalls >= 2 (the signal was retrieved and used at least twice)
• Status = staged (raw candidates with status=staged only)
• Content is a rule, preference, or durable fact — not a raw conversation fragment, not a debug log, not a confidence=0.00 dream corpus entry

Rejection Criteria (auto-reject)

• Confidence = 0.00 or status != staged
• Content is a raw session transcript or chat log (contains Candidate: User: or Candidate: Assistant: or evidence: memory/.dreams/)
• Duplicate of an existing MEMORY.md entry (same semantic content)
• Content is ephemeral (specific timestamps, one-off events, resolved issues)

Review Process

1. Run openclaw memory promote to list candidates
2. For each candidate, check against minimum requirements and rejection criteria
3. Accept only with a one-line rationale: why this is durable and useful
4. Reject with a one-line reason: why this doesn't belong
5. Rewrite accepted content into clean, concise rule format before adding to MEMORY.md
6. Never paste raw dream output directly into MEMORY.md

Post-Review Cleanup

• After review, clear processed candidates from DREAMS.md staging area
• Log review outcome in memory/daily/YYYY-MM-DD.md: [HH:MM] Dream review: accepted N, rejected M

Safety Rules

• Content changes (MEMORY.md): require explicit review — never auto-apply
• Archiving old files: safe to run automatically
• trash > rm always

Retention Policy

• Daily notes: keep 30 days → archive to memory/archive/YYYY-MM/
• Archive: keep 90 days → delete
• MEMORY.md: prune if >200 lines

Health Indicators

• ✅ Healthy: MEMORY.md <200 lines, DREAMS.md updated nightly, daily notes exist
• ⚠️ Warning: MEMORY.md 200–300 lines, Dreaming didn't run in 48h
• ❌ Critical: MEMORY.md >300 lines, no Dreaming output in 7 days