openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix [Feature]: session_compact gateway method [1 participants]

Summary

Add a gateway method session_compact that wraps the internal compactEmbeddedPiSessionDirect, callable via the plugin SDK's registerGatewayMethod, providing agents a proactive alternative on top of manual /compact commands or reactive triggers like compaction.safe.mode and compaction.reserveTokensFloor."

Benefits

• Immersive conversations: Agents can advice or tell you if you want to compact conversation before continuing
• Lessen context overflow errors. During mid-conversation users can sometimes forgot to do /compact
• 3 layers of context overflow protections. proactive, reactive and manual

Problem to solve

• Allows agents to have capability to perform autonomous compaction between sessions.
• Gives agents decisions to perform compaction in between sessions
• Agents have no autonomous context management: Session compaction currently requires the user to manually run /compact; agents can't detect or trigger it themselves
• Provide an alternative to manual compaction and compaction.mode and compaction.reserveTokensFloor configuration

Proposed solution

Add a session_compact gateway method via registerGatewayMethod in the plugin SDK that wraps the existing internal compactEmbeddedPiSessionDirect function.

or

Expose compactEmbeddedPiSession (or a public wrapper) via the plugin SDK's registerGatewayMethod allowing plugins to register a gateway method that wraps the internal compaction function.

Alternatives considered

Tried to create a plugin to enforce the proposed solution, but ended up discovering that there is no API exposed for the plugin

Impact

Affected users/systems/channels:

• OpenClaw agents built on the plugin SDK
• Any agent session that handles complex, multi-step, or long-running tasks
• All channels (WhatsApp, Discord, Telegram, etc.) where OpenClaw agents operate

Severity:

• Blocks workflow when context fills, the session dies mid-task with no recovery; the user must manually /new and restore context
• Annoying even before death, rising context causes degraded performance and slower responses

Frequency:

• Always for sessions that accumulate meaningful context the longer the session, the more inevitable the overflow
• More frequent for agents doing research, coding, analysis, or any task-heavy workload

Consequence:

• Session death mid-task, losing all in-flight context and continuity
• Manual recovery required: user must manually run /new, losing conversation history
• Extra manual work: agents cannot self-manage their context; users must babysit and manually trigger compaction

Evidence/examples

No response

Additional information

No response