openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix memory-core dreaming cron may not auto-register on gateway startup [2 comments, 3 participants]

Summary

memory-core dreaming does not reliably auto-register its managed cron job on gateway startup.

In my environment, /dreaming was enabled and configured to run daily at 0 3 * * *, but no Memory Dreaming Promotion job was present in cron/jobs.json, so the nightly dreaming sweep never got registered automatically.

This appears to be caused by two upstream startup-path issues working together.

Version

Observed on openclaw 2026.4.5.

Expected behavior

When memory-core dreaming is enabled, gateway startup should ensure that the managed cron job exists:

• name: Memory Dreaming Promotion
• payload text: __openclaw_memory_core_short_term_promotion_dream__

This should happen automatically after gateway startup, without manual edits to cron/jobs.json.

Actual behavior

dreaming was enabled in config, but the managed cron job was missing from cron/jobs.json, so no automatic 03:00 dreaming run was scheduled.

Root cause analysis

1. memory-core may be excluded from startup plugin loading

In src/plugins/channel-plugin-ids.ts, resolveGatewayStartupPluginIds() does not appear to explicitly include enabled kind=memory plugins in the startup plugin set.

That means memory-core may not be loaded early enough for its startup reconciliation hook to run.

Source: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openclaw/openclaw/main/src/plugins/channel-plugin-ids.ts

2. plugin startup hooks are cleared during sidecar startup

In src/gateway/server-startup.ts, startGatewaySidecars() still does:

clearInternalHooks();
const loadedCount = await loadInternalHooks(...);

But memory-core registers its dreaming reconcile logic through a plugin hook on gateway:startup.

So plugin hooks registered during plugin load can be wiped before the delayed gateway:startup event is triggered.

Source: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openclaw/openclaw/main/src/gateway/server-startup.ts

Local confirmation

I confirmed locally that after:

1. ensuring memory-core is included in startup plugin loading
2. preventing the startup path from wiping plugin-registered hooks

the gateway logs began showing:

memory-core: created managed dreaming cron job.

and cron/jobs.json then contained the managed Memory Dreaming Promotion job with the expected next-run timestamp.

Suggested fix

One possible fix is:

1. explicitly include enabled kind=memory plugins in resolveGatewayStartupPluginIds()
2. avoid clearing plugin-registered internal hooks during startGatewaySidecars(), or separate dynamically loaded workspace hooks from plugin hooks so they are not wiped together

Notes

There are two separate layers here:

• If gateway is not running at 03:00, the job obviously cannot execute.
• But even when gateway is running, the managed dreaming cron may fail to auto-register because of the startup/plugin hook path above.