Summary

/status can show misleading context usage when session token totals are stale.

When totalTokens is missing and totalTokensFresh=false, the status output currently falls back to inputTokens + outputTokens, which can display values like 299k/200k (149%) even though true context occupancy is unknown.

Why this is a problem

• It looks like auto-compaction failed, while Compactions may still be 0.
• It conflates cumulative accounting usage with current in-window context usage.
• Operators cannot distinguish "unknown" from "actually overflowing".

Repro

1. Use a session entry where:
   • totalTokens: null
   • totalTokensFresh: false
   • inputTokens: 298437
   • outputTokens: 147
   • contextTokens: 200000
2. Run /status.

Observed:

• Context: 299k/200k (149%)
• Compactions: 0

Expected:

• Context should be shown as unknown (for example ?/200k or unknown/200k), not inferred from input+output when freshness is false.

Root cause (code)

In status rendering path, total tokens are computed as:

totalTokens = entry.totalTokens ?? (entry.inputTokens + entry.outputTokens)

without checking totalTokensFresh.

Proposed fix

• Only trust entry.totalTokens when fresh (totalTokensFresh !== false).
• Do not synthesize context occupancy from input+output when totals are stale.
• Keep transcript-usage override path (if available) to recover an actually useful total.
• Add regression test for totalTokensFresh=false.

Version

Observed in OpenClaw 2026.3.11 (commit shown by openclaw --version).