openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix [Bug]: Regression — cross-channel context discovery no longer works when user moves between surfaces [2 comments, 2 participants]

Summary

When a user moves a conversation from one channel (e.g., WhatsApp) to another (e.g., webchat) as the same identity, the new session has zero awareness of the prior conversation. The agent on the second surface answers as a blank slate.

A previous OpenClaw version did not have this problem — the agent would surface context from the user's recent activity on other channels automatically. Reported by a user (Davinci) on 2026-05-13 against OpenClaw 2026.5.7 (eeef486).

Reproduction

1. User talks to agent on WhatsApp; they agree on an action plan that requires webchat approval (e.g., privileged system change blocked by workspace policy on messaging channels).
2. Agent says "paste approval into webchat."
3. User opens webchat and writes something like "go ahead with the JR fix we discussed."
4. Expected: webchat agent finds the recent WhatsApp conversation context (via cross-session/cross-channel awareness) and acts on it, or at minimum asks a targeted question.
5. Actual: webchat agent has no awareness of the WhatsApp conversation at all and responds as if hearing this for the first time.

Impact

• Breaks the standard workspace pattern of "discuss on messaging channel → approve in webchat for privileged action" — which is itself a security guardrail many workspaces enforce.
• Users have to manually copy/paste context across surfaces, which defeats the purpose of having an agent with memory.
• Cited as a regression from a prior version that did pull cross-channel context.

Available primitives that should make this fixable

The agent already has:

• sessions_list (with filters for activeMinutes, kinds, search, last-message previews)
• sessions_history (fetch sanitized history for a visible session)
• memory_search with corpus=sessions (semantic search over indexed session transcripts)

So the data exists; the problem is the agent isn't prompted/biased/told to consult it when context is missing.

Suggested fixes (in order of effort)

1. Soft prompt nudge — when a turn opens with an ambiguous referent ("the fix", "what we discussed", "go ahead with that"), the system prompt or context engine could nudge: "if context is missing for a referent, check recent sessions on other channels for the same user identity."
2. Auto-attach recent cross-channel previews — when a session for user X opens, inject a short summary block listing user X's recent activity on other surfaces (last ~30 min). Cheap, low-token, high-value.
3. First-class identity binding — overlap with the work in #14850. A "user identity" that spans channels and resolves to a unified recent-history view.
4. Handoff token — explicit /handoff <channel> command that bundles current context for the target surface.

Related

• #14850 (cross-channel session unification — feature request)
• #40678 (cross-channel visibility in TUI)

Environment

• OpenClaw 2026.5.7 (eeef486)
• macOS, Mac Mini M4 Pro gateway
• Channels involved: WhatsApp ↔ webchat