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openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix bug(sessions_list): only returns active session — BB/iMessage/idle sessions invisible [1 comments, 2 participants]

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openclaw/openclaw#70635•Fetched 2026-04-24 05:55:22
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sessions_list MCP tool returns only the currently-active session, even though the on-disk session catalog contains hundreds of other sessions across multiple channels (BlueBubbles, iMessage, Slack, Telegram, cron, subagent, hook). Downstream consumers that rely on sessions_list (cron jobs building daily-review synthesis, channel-health monitors) silently miss everything outside the active session.

Root Cause

  • Daily-review cron builds its synthesis from sessions_list + sessions_history. Because BB/iMessage sessions never surface, the daily review falsely reported "No Mark interaction — fourth consecutive day" despite active daily iMessage conversation. Users had to work around this by find /Users/<agent>/.openclaw/agents/main/sessions/ -name '*.jsonl' -newer /tmp/today-midnight in the cron prompt — obviously not sustainable.
  • Any health check that treats "no recent session activity" as a gateway-down signal will produce false negatives on BB/iMessage.
  • Downstream tools (handoff summaries, weekly digests, observability dashboards) built on top of sessions_list are silently incomplete.

Code Example

cron:        112
slack:        40
subagent:     19
direct:       18
bluebubbles:   6
hook:          2
main:          1
              ---
total:       198
RAW_BUFFERClick to expand / collapse

Summary

sessions_list MCP tool returns only the currently-active session, even though the on-disk session catalog contains hundreds of other sessions across multiple channels (BlueBubbles, iMessage, Slack, Telegram, cron, subagent, hook). Downstream consumers that rely on sessions_list (cron jobs building daily-review synthesis, channel-health monitors) silently miss everything outside the active session.

Repro

Running on openclaw-gateway v2026.4.11, Node 22, macOS. Agent dir: /Users/gaston/.openclaw/agents/main/.

On-disk session catalog (sessions.json) has 198 sessions across 7 origin kinds:

cron:        112
slack:        40
subagent:     19
direct:       18
bluebubbles:   6
hook:          2
main:          1
              ---
total:       198

Calling sessions_list with limit: 10 (or any limit) returns 1 session — only the currently-active Telegram session. BlueBubbles, iMessage, Slack, and cron sessions are all invisible, even though their .jsonl files have recent mtimes (e.g. an 8.1 MB BlueBubbles session file modified within the last hour).

Impact

  • Daily-review cron builds its synthesis from sessions_list + sessions_history. Because BB/iMessage sessions never surface, the daily review falsely reported "No Mark interaction — fourth consecutive day" despite active daily iMessage conversation. Users had to work around this by find /Users/<agent>/.openclaw/agents/main/sessions/ -name '*.jsonl' -newer /tmp/today-midnight in the cron prompt — obviously not sustainable.
  • Any health check that treats "no recent session activity" as a gateway-down signal will produce false negatives on BB/iMessage.
  • Downstream tools (handoff summaries, weekly digests, observability dashboards) built on top of sessions_list are silently incomplete.

Expected

sessions_list should return all sessions in the catalog by default, or at minimum support a kinds / origins filter that includes non-active BB and iMessage sessions. Active-only filtering may be the right default for some UX flows, but it should be opt-in, not the only mode.

Suggested investigation

Check whether the filter is session.active === true (or equivalent) at the API layer, or whether it's a session-kind classification bug where BB/iMessage sessions are tagged in a way that the list endpoint excludes. The data on disk is complete — the problem is in the query/filter, not the catalog.

Relates to

extent analysis

TL;DR

The sessions_list MCP tool likely needs a filter adjustment to include non-active sessions from various channels like BlueBubbles and iMessage.

Guidance

  • Investigate the API layer to check if the filter is set to session.active === true or an equivalent condition that excludes non-active sessions.
  • Verify if the session-kind classification is correct for BlueBubbles and iMessage sessions to ensure they are not being tagged in a way that the list endpoint excludes them.
  • Consider adding a kinds or origins filter to the sessions_list endpoint to support inclusion of non-active sessions from specific channels.
  • Review the downstream consumers (e.g., cron jobs, channel-health monitors) to assess the impact of the incomplete session list and plan for adjustments once the sessions_list issue is resolved.

Example

No code snippet is provided as the issue does not specify the exact implementation details of the sessions_list tool or the API layer.

Notes

The issue seems to be related to the filtering mechanism of the sessions_list tool rather than the session catalog itself, as the on-disk session catalog contains all the expected sessions.

Recommendation

Apply a workaround by modifying the sessions_list tool to include non-active sessions or by adding a filter to include sessions from specific channels until a permanent fix is implemented. This is because the current behavior is causing significant issues with downstream consumers and the daily review process.

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openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix bug(sessions_list): only returns active session — BB/iMessage/idle sessions invisible [1 comments, 2 participants]