OpenClaw bug report draft: Control UI / TUI session continuity disappears during normal use

Summary

OpenClaw local sessions intermittently disappear or become inaccessible during normal use.

This affects both:

• Control UI / WebChat
• TUI

The problem is not explained by a single bad local workflow. After isolating likely confounders, session continuity still appears unreliable enough to break normal conversation flow.

Environment

• Host: macOS (Darwin 25.1.0 arm64)
• OpenClaw installed via Homebrew/npm path under /opt/homebrew/lib/node_modules/openclaw
• Gateway running locally on port 18789
• Dashboard/control UI accessed locally
• Common URL used during testing: http://127.0.0.1:18789/
• Auth: token URL flow

Observed symptoms

1. Existing chat/session disappears from Control UI session list or the active page loses continuity.
2. TUI conversation continuity also appears to break, not just Control UI.
3. Messages or follow-up interaction appear to vanish during/after tool execution or reconnect-like moments.
4. Sending slash-style skill triggers from Control UI chat composer was unreliable in this state.
5. Creating/switching sessions, reconnecting, or mixed-surface usage appears to increase the chance of losing continuity.

Reproduction pattern (not fully deterministic, but repeatedly observed)

1. Open local dashboard / Control UI.
2. Use the same environment across Control UI and/or TUI.
3. Send normal messages, sometimes involving tools or longer-running work.
4. Sometimes open a new session, switch sessions, or reconnect.
5. After some interaction, the visible session/chat continuity disappears or becomes inaccessible.

What was ruled out / investigated

1. Token/session URL parsing mismatch suspicion

Local inspection showed the frontend parser accepts token, gatewayUrl, and session from URL search/hash.
A pinned URL mitigation was tested:

• http://127.0.0.1:18789/#token=...&session=agent:main:main

Result:

• Brief improvement
• Not a full fix, session still disappeared later

2. Local skill installation issue

Graphify skill was confirmed installed correctly in the local user skill directory and includes trigger: /graphify.

So the continuity issue was not caused by the skill being absent.

3. OpenClaw cron interference

Relevant auto-nudge cron jobs were inspected and found disabled at time of investigation.

4. Separate macOS LaunchAgent interference

A separate LaunchAgent existed and was likely a confounder.

It was configured with:

• RunAtLoad = true
• StartInterval = 300

It repeatedly attempted to run an OpenClaw-related continuation script and logged repeated failures:

• error: required option '-t, --target <dest>' not specified

This LaunchAgent was then explicitly disabled.

Even after identifying this as a likely amplifier/confounder, the broader session continuity issue still appeared credible.

Local evidence gathered

• Control UI frontend state/parser inspection in built assets under:
  • /opt/homebrew/lib/node_modules/openclaw/dist/control-ui/assets/
• Session/parser logic observed in built frontend asset bundle
• Pinned launcher created locally to force host + session
• Local repro notes and artifacts recorded during debugging

Why this seems like an upstream issue

The failure mode closely resembles existing issue classes already seen by users:

• session disappears from dropdown / becomes inaccessible
• previous chat becomes inaccessible after session change/new session
• content disappears during tool execution / heartbeat / reconnect-like transitions
• token/session instability across surfaces

The problem also affected more than one surface, which makes it less likely to be a simple one-page UI mistake.

Impact

This breaks confidence in OpenClaw as a stable live work surface for:

• multi-turn conversations
• long tool-assisted tasks
• switching between TUI and Control UI
• using the UI as a reliable audit trail of work already done

Users are forced to treat on-disk file outputs as the only trustworthy source of truth.

Requested help

Please help identify whether there is a current regression in:

• session persistence/storage
• cross-surface session synchronization
• reconnect/session restoration
• session selection/focus after tool runs or new sessions

If useful, I can provide more exact local state, config snippets, and additional reproduction traces privately in redacted form.