openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Control UI should always surface the canonical main session in the chat dropdown [1 participants]

Summary

The Control UI chat session dropdown does not reliably surface the canonical main session. In practice, a user can end up without an obvious main / assistant session target in the dropdown, even though the canonical session exists as agent:main:main.

For direct assistant use, there should always be a stable pinned entry such as:

• Chelmsworth (main) /main

that maps to:

• agent:main:main

Why this matters

For users who treat the main assistant as a persistent persona, the dropdown is effectively the primary routing control. If the canonical main session is missing or inconsistently represented, the UI creates avoidable confusion and makes it harder to reliably return to the main assistant.

Current behavior

• The canonical main session may exist and be active.
• The Control UI does not always expose it as a stable, obvious option in the chat session dropdown.
• Session aliases like main may not normalize to the canonical session key in a way that guarantees consistent dropdown behavior.

Expected behavior

The chat session dropdown should always include a pinned canonical main-session option:

• label: Chelmsworth (main) /main (or a generic equivalent if the product wants neutral naming)
• key: agent:main:main

Additionally, plain main should normalize to the canonical key so the UI state, persisted settings, and dropdown selection stay aligned.

Proposed fix

In the Control UI session dropdown logic:

1. Always inject agent:main:main into the available session options
2. Render it with a pinned/stable label, for example:
   • Chelmsworth (main) /main
3. Normalize main and equivalent aliases to agent:main:main
4. Apply the same normalization to:
   • current selected session
   • persisted settings.sessionKey
   • persisted settings.lastActiveSessionKey

Local hotfix that worked

I validated a local compiled-bundle patch against the installed Control UI asset:

• file: /opt/homebrew/lib/node_modules/openclaw/dist/control-ui/assets/index-Dts6VHgr.js

The working patch did two things:

1. In session normalization logic, defaulted missing/alias main values to agent:main:main
2. In the dropdown builder, always injected agent:main:main and labeled it Chelmsworth (main) /main

Suggested implementation direction

A source-level fix should likely live near the Control UI chat session option builder and the session-key normalization helpers, rather than in compiled dist output.

Pseudocode:

const CANONICAL_MAIN_SESSION_KEY = "agent:main:main";

function normalizeMainSessionKey(key?: string, ctx?: { mainSessionKey?: string; mainKey?: string; defaultAgentId?: string }) {
  const canonical = ctx?.mainSessionKey ?? CANONICAL_MAIN_SESSION_KEY;
  if (!key) return canonical;
  if (
    key === "main" ||
    key === (ctx?.mainKey ?? "main") ||
    key === CANONICAL_MAIN_SESSION_KEY ||
    key === `agent:${ctx?.defaultAgentId}:main` ||
    key === `agent:${ctx?.defaultAgentId}:${ctx?.mainKey ?? "main"}`
  ) {
    return canonical;
  }
  return key;
}

function buildSessionOptions(...) {
  addOption({
    key: CANONICAL_MAIN_SESSION_KEY,
    label: "Chelmsworth (main) /main",
    pinned: true,
  });

  // then merge in discovered sessions as usual
}

Version observed

• openclaw npm package version: 2026.4.9

Repro notes

Observed in a live local install where the main session existed and was active, but the desired stable main-session dropdown affordance was not guaranteed.