Where is the beat place to initiate session rules

[willow cobalt]

if I need to add the prompts as below, the best place to add it is to agents.md - am I correct?

SESSION INITIALIZATION RULE:

On every session start:

1. Load ONLY these files:

   • SOUL.md
   • USER.md
   • IDENTITY.md
   • memory/YYYY-MM-DD.md (if it exists)

2. DO NOT auto-load:

   • MEMORY.md
   • Session history
   • Prior messages
   • Previous tool outputs

3. When user asks about prior context:

   • Use memory_search() on demand
   • Pull only the relevant snippet with memory_get()
   • Don't load the whole file

4. Update memory/YYYY-MM-DD.md at end of session with:

   • What you worked on
   • Decisions made
   • Leads generated
   • Blockers
   • Next steps

[remote falcon]

Yep — AGENTS.md is the right place for that kind of “operating rules / how to run the session” instruction set.

A couple important nuances in OpenClaw though:

• You can’t enforce “load ONLY these files” just by writing it in AGENTS.md.
  OpenClaw itself injects a fixed bootstrap set into the system prompt each run (by default: AGENTS.md, SOUL.md, TOOLS.md, IDENTITY.md, USER.md, HEARTBEAT.md, plus BOOTSTRAP.md on brand-new workspaces).
  You can verify what’s actually injected with /context list.
  Docs: https://docs.openclaw.ai/concepts/context

• MEMORY.md is not auto-injected by default (unless you customized things). So your “DO NOT auto-load MEMORY.md” rule is mostly already aligned with how it works; you’re basically telling the agent “don’t go read it unless asked / unless needed”.

• For your “update memory/YYYY-MM-DD.md at end of session” goal: OpenClaw already supports workflows/hooks that help with this:

  • The automatic memory flush before compaction (config-driven)
  • The bundled session-memory hook (writes a memory note on /new)
    Docs: https://docs.openclaw.ai/concepts/memory and https://docs.openclaw.ai/hooks

If you truly want to change which files are injected (so it literally only injects your chosen subset), that’s more advanced: it’s done via a hook on agent:bootstrap that mutates context.bootstrapFiles, not via AGENTS.md. Docs: https://docs.openclaw.ai/hooks

But for “where do I put these rules so the agent follows them?” → AGENTS.md is correct.