🤖 AI-assisted PR (Claude/OpenClaw agents). Fully tested, all changes reviewed and understood by human submitter.

Fixes two related issues causing session indexing to stop after gateway restart:

1. Move needsFullReindex check before reason gate in shouldSyncSessions()
2. Persist sessionsDirty flag to database metadata and rebuild dirty file set on startup

Summary

• Problem: Session memory indexing silently stops after gateway restart — no errors, no warnings
• Why it matters: Users lose session search permanently until manual DB intervention; no workaround survives restarts
• What changed: Reordered logic gate in shouldSyncSessions(), added sessionsDirty persistence to DB meta, added rebuildSessionsDirtyFiles() on startup
• What did NOT change: Indexing logic, chunking, embedding pipeline, config schema — purely a state management fix

Change Type (select all)

• Bug fix
• Feature
• Refactor
• Docs
• Security hardening
• Chore/infra

Scope (select all touched areas)

• Gateway / orchestration
• Skills / tool execution
• Auth / tokens
• Memory / storage
• Integrations
• API / contracts
• UI / DX
• CI/CD / infra

Linked Issue/PR

• Related Session transcript indexing skipped on CLI cold start (sessionsDirty never initialized) #6600
• Related Session memory indexing skips historical sessions on first startup #3558

User-visible / Behavior Changes

• Session memory indexing now resumes correctly after gateway restart (previously silently stopped)
• No config changes, no new options, no migration needed

Security Impact (required)

• New permissions/capabilities? No
• Secrets/tokens handling changed? No
• New/changed network calls? No
• Command/tool execution surface changed? No
• Data access scope changed? No

Repro + Verification

Environment

• OS: Ubuntu 22.04
• Runtime/container: Node.js v22
• Model/provider: Local embeddings (nomic-embed-text-v1.5 GGUF)
• Relevant config:

  {
    "memorySearch": {
      "sources": ["memory", "sessions"],
      "experimental": { "sessionMemory": true },
      "sync": { "intervalMinutes": 5 }
    }
  }

Steps

1. Enable session memory with interval sync (config above)
2. Let interval sync index some sessions — verify with openclaw memory status
3. Restart gateway: openclaw gateway restart
4. Check openclaw memory status over the next interval cycle

Expected

• Session file count continues increasing after restart

Actual

• Session count freezes, shows Dirty: yes but no indexing activity

Evidence

• Failing test/log before + passing after

Two new tests in src/memory/index.test.ts:

1. Reindex gate order — calls shouldSyncSessions({ reason: "session-start" }, true) and asserts true. Before the fix this returned false. Also verifies negative case.
2. Dirty state persistence — writes meta with sessionsDirty: true, closes manager, reopens, asserts dirty state is restored.

All 10 tests passing, linter clean.

Human Verification (required)

• Verified: shouldSyncSessions() gate order — needsFullReindex now checked before reason
• Verified: sessionsDirty added to MemoryIndexMeta type
• Verified: Persistence write in runSafeReindex and restore in constructor
• Verified: rebuildSessionsDirtyFiles() queries existing files table with correct schema
• Edge cases: Empty sessions dir (empty Set, no-op), missing meta field (optional, defaults falsy)
• Not verified: Full end-to-end reindex cycle on live system (unit tests only)

Compatibility / Migration

• Backward compatible? Yes
• Config/env changes? No
• Migration needed? No

Failure Recovery (if this breaks)

• How to revert: Revert commit, restart gateway
• Files to restore: src/memory/manager-sync-ops.ts, src/memory/manager.ts
• Bad symptoms: If rebuildSessionsDirtyFiles() fails, logs warning and continues — does not block startup

Risks and Mitigations

• Risk: rebuildSessionsDirtyFiles() scans all session files on startup, could be slow with thousands of files
  • Mitigation: Runs async (void this.rebuildSessionsDirtyFiles()), does not block constructor or first sync

Greptile Summary

This PR fixes two related bugs that caused session memory indexing to silently stop after gateway restart:

• Reindex gate order fix (manager-sync-ops.ts): Moves the needsFullReindex check before the reason gate in shouldSyncSessions(). Previously, reason === "session-start" or "watch" would short-circuit and return false even when a full reindex was needed, preventing session indexing from ever completing after a restart.
• Dirty state persistence (manager.ts, manager-sync-ops.ts): Adds sessionsDirty to the MemoryIndexMeta type and persists it to DB metadata during runSafeReindex. On startup, the constructor restores this flag and calls rebuildSessionsDirtyFiles() to rediscover unindexed session files by comparing the file system against the files table.
• Two new tests cover both fixes with positive and negative assertions.

The changes are well-scoped and backward-compatible. One minor inconsistency: runUnsafeReindex (test-only path) does not persist sessionsDirty to meta, unlike runSafeReindex.

Confidence Score: 4/5

• This PR is safe to merge — it fixes a clear logic ordering bug and adds state persistence with graceful fallbacks.
• The gate reorder fix is straightforward and correct. The persistence mechanism is sound — rebuildSessionsDirtyFiles is wrapped in try/catch and runs as fire-and-forget, so startup isn't blocked if it fails. Tests cover both changes. Minor deduction for the runUnsafeReindex inconsistency (test-only) and the fact that sessionsDirty is only persisted during full reindex, not during regular sync cycles (mitigated by the rebuild-on-startup approach).
• src/memory/manager-sync-ops.ts — runUnsafeReindex should be updated for consistency with the new sessionsDirty persistence in runSafeReindex.

_{Last reviewed commit: eca6eca}

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Context used:

• Context from dashboard - CLAUDE.md (source)