Sleep — Lightweight Memory Consolidation for OpenClaw

memory-sleep

is a small, conservative skill for agents that keep:

• daily notes in

  memory/YYYY-MM-DD.md

• long-term knowledge in

  MEMORY.md

It does not introduce extra indexes, dashboards, archives, or custom memory schemas. Its job is simple: keep

MEMORY.md

fresh while daily files remain raw journals.

Use When

• User says

  dream

• User asks to consolidate memory
• A nightly cron runs the skill
• Daily memory files are piling up and

  MEMORY.md

  is getting stale

Goals

• Keep the existing OpenClaw-style memory structure
• Distill durable facts from recent journals
• Correct stale information in

  MEMORY.md

• Avoid over-editing or inventing new structure

Inputs

• MEMORY.md

• memory/YYYY-MM-DD.md

  files

Outputs

• Updated

  MEMORY.md

• Optional short run note appended to today's daily file

Consolidation Flow

1. Orient

1. Read

   MEMORY.md

2. List files in

   memory/

3. Focus on recent daily files first

2. Scan Recent Daily Files

Default window: last 7 days.

Extract only durable items such as:

• preferences
• decisions
• recurring facts
• important project context
• corrections to stale memory

Ignore or down-rank:

• routine acknowledgements
• temporary chatter
• one-off noise with no lasting value

3. Merge Conservatively into

MEMORY.md

Use surgical edits only.

Allowed operations:

• Add new durable facts
• Correct stale facts with newer confirmed info
• Deduplicate overlapping entries
• Prune clearly obsolete items when confidence is high
• Absolutize relative dates where useful

Do not:

• rewrite the whole file unnecessarily
• create a new memory system
• add bureaucratic structure unless the file already uses it

4. Optional Journal Marking

For older files already consolidated, optionally prepend a short HTML comment such as:

<!-- consolidated to MEMORY.md on YYYY-MM-DD -->

Never delete journal files.

5. Report Briefly

Return a short summary like:

🌙 Dream complete
- Scanned N daily files
- MEMORY.md: +N added / ~N corrected / -N pruned

Rules

• Prefer the existing workspace memory architecture

• MEMORY.md

  is the primary long-term memory output
• Daily files remain journals, not databases
• Be conservative when removing information
• Avoid leaking secrets into reports or memory summaries
• If logging the run, keep it short

Recommended Cron

Nightly example:

0 3 * * *

Example job message:

Execute dream skill: consolidate memory

Design Principle

This skill is intentionally minimal.

It is for users who want:

• lightweight consolidation
• compatibility with default OpenClaw memory habits
• no imposed sidecar files unless they choose to add them later

Think of it as a careful editor, not a memory framework.