#Every time I run the OpenClaw doctor it finds Orphaned transcript files.

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formal hazel
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Every time I run the OpenClaw doctor it finds Orphaned transcript files. So far only from my main agent, have not seen it find orphaned files from other agents.

austere monolithBOT
#

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bitter meteorBOT
#

First check: what does this show?

openclaw --version

Doctor’s “orphaned transcript files” means: there are *.jsonl transcript files under something like:

~/.openclaw/agents/main/sessions/

…but sessions.json no longer references them. If you don’t accept the archive prompt, doctor will report the same files every run.

Safe cleanup:

# 
openclaw doctor --repair

That should archive them by renaming to *.deleted.<timestamp> — not hard-delete them.

If they come back after repair, especially with new filenames each time, that’s worth a bug report. Please paste:

openclaw --version
openclaw doctor
openclaw sessions --agent main --verbose
openclaw sessions cleanup --agent main --dry-run

Docs: https://docs.openclaw.ai/gateway/doctor and https://docs.openclaw.ai/cli/sessions

formal hazel
#

I am using version 2026.4.23... I have said yes to the doctor archiving them. But it worries me that there are sessions orphaned. can it be because I clean/remove sessions in the openclaw control?

bitter meteorBOT
#

Yes, it can be related to removing sessions — an orphan transcript is basically:

transcript file exists on disk, but sessions.json no longer points at it.

That said, the Control UI delete flow is supposed to archive transcripts too, so normal Control cleanup should not keep producing new doctor warnings.

If you say “yes” in doctor, it only renames them to:

*.jsonl.deleted.<timestamp>

So it’s safe/recoverable, not an immediate “my sessions are corrupt” situation.

What I’d check:

# 
openclaw doctor
# say yes to archive
openclaw doctor
  • If the second run is clean: you’re fine.
  • If it immediately finds new orphan transcript files again, that smells like a bug or a race.
  • If it only happens after you delete/clean sessions in Control, that’s useful repro info.

Main agent only also makes sense — it’s usually the one getting most session resets/deletes/activity.

If it keeps coming back, I’d file this as an issue with:

  • openclaw --version → 2026.4.23
  • the orphan examples doctor prints
  • whether it happens after Control UI session deletion
formal hazel
#

archived sessions are not scanned for memory and wiki, right?

bitter meteorBOT
#

Not quite — archived transcripts are no longer active sessions, but they can still be used by memory indexing.

Doctor’s archive rename:

session.jsonl.deleted.<timestamp>

means “not active / not referenced by sessions.json anymore”, not “hidden from all memory systems.”

Current behavior: session transcript indexing includes normal transcripts plus .reset.* and .deleted.* transcript archives, while excluding .bak.*, checkpoints, etc. So if you have session-memory indexing enabled, archived sessions may still be searchable/recallable.

For wiki specifically: the compiled wiki is separate, but memory_search corpus=all can search durable memory + wiki + indexed sessions depending on enabled backends.

If you don’t want archived sessions recalled:

  1. move the *.jsonl.deleted.* files out of the agent’s sessions/ dir, or disable session transcript indexing
  2. then rebuild the index: