dreaming sessions | Friends of the Crustacean 🦞🤝 | Page 1

tropic acorn Apr 29, 2026, 10:59 AM

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So my openclaw is up to date (OpenClaw 2026.4.26) and yesterday I manually deleted all old dreaming sessions, but today now I check and I have new 25 or so dreaming sessions there again. I thought they were supposed to be automatically cleaned up afterwards? They are showing as 4h old.

stark hareBOT Apr 29, 2026, 10:59 AM

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umbral briarBOT Apr 29, 2026, 11:01 AM

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I checked current docs/source: 2026.4.26 is the latest published npm version, so you’re not behind.

Two cases:

Keys look like ...:cron:memory-dreaming:run:...
Those are isolated cron run sessions. They’re not deleted immediately — default retention is 24h via cron.sessionRetention, so 4h old is expected.
Keys look like dreaming-narrative-*
Those are Dream Diary subagent sessions and should be cleaned after the run. If 25 of those remain 4h later, that sounds like cleanup failed / a bug.

Useful checks:

openclaw sessions --all-agents --json
openclaw logs --since 6h | grep -Ei "dreaming|narrative session cleanup|cron-reaper"

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If you manually deleted transcript files and now have dangling session rows:

openclaw sessions cleanup --all-agents --enforce --fix-missing

Docs:
https://docs.openclaw.ai/concepts/dreaming
https://docs.openclaw.ai/cli/sessions

If they’re dreaming-narrative-*, I’d file this with the session key pattern + those log lines: https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/issues

tropic acorn Apr 29, 2026, 11:11 AM

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yes they are all dreaming-narrative-* such as agent:librarian:dreaming-narrative-deep-03fc358922c6-1777446020430. , maybe an issue because my default agents name is not main?

Here is condensed log:
03:00:25 info plugins memory-core: dreaming promotion complete (workspaces=7, candidates=65, applied=2, failed=0).
03:05:39 info plugins memory-core: dreaming cleanup scrubbed 0 stale entries, archived 5 orphan transcripts.
03:05:39 info plugins memory-core: dreaming cleanup scrubbed 14 stale entries, archived 7 orphan transcripts.
03:05:40 info plugins memory-core: dreaming cleanup scrubbed 1 stale entry, archived 0 orphan transcripts.
03:05:44 info plugins memory-core: dreaming cleanup scrubbed 3 stale entries, archived 0 orphan transcripts.
03:06:29 info plugins memory-core: dreaming cleanup scrubbed 3 stale entries, archived 0 orphan transcripts.
03:06:29 info plugins memory-core: dreaming cleanup scrubbed 1 stale entry, archived 0 orphan transcripts.
03:07:26 info plugins memory-core: dreaming cleanup scrubbed 8 stale entries, archived 0 orphan transcripts.
03:11:29 → 03:14:03 warn diagnostic stuck session: librarian / dreaming-narrative-rem-e96e54f5c8a3-1777446008257 processing 146s→300s
03:13:20 info plugins memory-core: dreaming cleanup scrubbed 4 stale entries, archived 5 orphan transcripts.
03:16:39 → 03:22:32 warn diagnostic stuck session: 265958a4... / dreaming-narrative-deep-03fc358922c6-1777446020430 processing 150s→503s
03:17:49 warn diagnostic stuck session: librarian / dreaming-narrative-rem-68bed0fa5277-1777446023361 processing 146s
05:00:39 warn plugins memory-core: managed dreaming cron could not be reconciled (cron service unavailable).

umbral briarBOT Apr 29, 2026, 11:11 AM

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Yeah, that pattern is the important bit. agent:librarian:dreaming-narrative-* should still be recognized — non-main default agent should not by itself cause this.

Those logs look more like the Dream Diary subagent runs are getting stuck/timeout-delayed, so the normal deleteSession() cleanup isn’t reliably finishing. The scrubber is clearly running and cleaning some old/orphaned artifacts, but the later:

diagnostic stuck session: librarian / dreaming-narrative-...

means the session lane stayed active for minutes. That’s bug-shaped.

The 05:00 managed dreaming cron could not be reconciled (cron service unavailable) is worth including too, but I don’t think it explains the 03:00 leftovers by itself.

I’d file this with:

OpenClaw 2026.4.26
default agent id: librarian
example key: agent:librarian:dreaming-narrative-deep-...

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the condensed log block you pasted
whether these entries have pluginOwnerId: "memory-core" in sessions.json, if you’re comfortable checking

Issue link: https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/issues

For now, cleanup is safe via UI/manual session deletion. openclaw sessions cleanup --all-agents --enforce --fix-missing only helps if the transcript files are already missing; it won’t necessarily prune live-looking 4h-old dreaming-narrative-* rows.

tropic acorn Apr 29, 2026, 11:13 AM

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Would it help to use a faster model for processing dreaming?

umbral briarBOT Apr 29, 2026, 11:14 AM

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Yes — as a workaround, probably.

dreaming.model only affects the Dream Diary narrative subagent runs — the dreaming-narrative-* sessions you’re seeing. If those are getting stuck because your default model is slow/queued/local, a faster/lower-latency model should reduce leftovers.

Config shape:

{
  plugins: {
    entries: {
      "memory-core": {
        subagent: {
          allowModelOverride: true,
          allowedModels: ["provider/model-here"],
        },
        config: {

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          dreaming: {
            enabled: true,
            model: "provider/model-here",
          },
        },
      },
    },
  },
}

Docs: https://docs.openclaw.ai/concepts/dreaming and https://docs.openclaw.ai/reference/memory-config#dreaming

I’d avoid picking a specific model in-thread since model advice gets stale fast — #models is better for current fast/cheap picks. But yes, for this specific symptom, using a quicker Dream Diary model is a sensible test.

#dreaming sessions