Memory compact

memory-compact — 7-day graduation of daily files

After a daily file crosses the 7-day active window, promote-at-capture and the Mon/Wed/Fri memory-promote sweep have had every chance to graduate durable content into the wiki. What's left is either:

• already wiki-pointered (→ see [wiki/...]) — these are pointers to durable content
• explicitly marked [keep] — the user wants this in the daily record indefinitely
• ephemeral (What Happened, Carry Forward) — drops on compact

This skill enforces that graduation. The file shrinks to a thin record; the full original moves to memory/cold-storage/ (which QMD excludes from indexing).

When this runs

• Primary: dedicated command cron. The "Memory compact — daily 23:45" cron runs bin/memory-compact-sweep --apply deterministically (a command cron — runs the script directly, no model judgment, can't hallucinate success). Wired 2026-06-13. session-cleanup may still surface compaction needs, but the nightly command cron is the authoritative runner.
• Manual: backfill. bin/memory-compact-sweep --apply to retroactively compact files older than 7 days. Phase 0d-3 will run this against the legacy 2026-05-17 through 2026-05-21 files after a retro-promote pass.

What it does

For each daily file workspace*/memory/YYYY-MM-DD.md older than 7 days (and lacking a <!-- mc:compacted ... --> marker):

1. Backup original to workspace*/memory/cold-storage/YYYY-MM-DD.md. Idempotent — skipped if cold-storage copy already exists.
2. Rewrite the daily file to:
   • Title line (# Memory — YYYY-MM-DD …)
   • <!-- mc:v1 --> marker
   • <!-- mc:compacted YYYY-MM-DD --> stamp (today)
   • ## Decisions — only bullets containing → see [wiki/...] or [keep]. Section omitted if zero bullets survive.
   • ## Key Lessons — same filter rule.
   • ## Reference — kept verbatim (skill-run IDs, source links).
   • Footer pointer line to cold-storage.
3. Drop entirely: ## What Happened, ## Carry Forward, any unknown section.

Sections are detected by ## Header at the start of a line. Unknown headers (legacy files often have free-text section names like "## Drift Incident System") drop by default — durable content should already be wiki-pointered.

Conventions

• Dry-run by default. bin/memory-compact-sweep without --apply prints the plan only. --apply writes.
• Idempotent. Files with <!-- mc:compacted --> are skipped; re-running is a no-op.
• Exit codes (matches memory-promote-sweep / qmd-sync):
  • 0 — all files written, or at least one written when others failed
  • 1 — every targeted file failed
  • 2 — bad arguments
• Cold-storage is QMD-excluded. The memory-main collection ignore pattern includes cold-storage/**, so compacted content disappears from search by design. If you need it back, copy from cold-storage to a wiki page.

Inputs

bin/memory-compact-sweep accepts:

• --apply — write changes; without this, dry-run.
• --workspace <name> — scope to one workspace (default: all covered workspaces).
• --max-age-days N — override the 7-day window (default: 7).
• --include-recent — DESTRUCTIVE; compact files <7d old. For backfill testing only.
• --verbose / -v — preview the first 20 lines of each planned compact output.

Outputs

Per-file plan line:

[PLAN] workspace/memory/2026-05-21.md  age=7d  lines 29→6 (-79%)  bullets kept=0 dropped=11

Summary on apply:

[memory-compact] applied: written=N failed=M

Legacy file gotcha (important)

The 2026-05-17 through 2026-05-21 files were written before the new architecture. They contain durable decisions (Drift Incident System Phase 1+2+3 shipping, etc.) that were never wiki-promoted because the architecture didn't exist yet. Running --apply on these right now would compact them to a tombstone, hiding the content in cold-storage where QMD can't search it.

Do not --apply against legacy files until Phase 0d-3 retro-promote runs first. Phase 0d-3 (a one-shot pass invoking memory-promote-sweep with a lower threshold over the 2026-05-17 → 2026-05-21 window) will harvest those decisions to the wiki, after which compact is safe.

For Phase 0d-1 (this build) and Phase 0d-2 (session-cleanup wire-in), the only files compacted will be post-architecture dailies — i.e., files born after 2026-05-28 with proper mc:item stamps and wiki pointers.

Files

• Script: ~/.openclaw/bin/memory-compact-sweep (Python, ~290 lines)
• This spec: ~/.openclaw/skills/memory-compact/SKILL.md
• Wire point: session-cleanup eod (Phase 0d-2, pending)

Not for

• Live daily files (<7 days old) — they're still in the capture window.
• Wiki entries — those are durable; this skill only touches memory/YYYY-MM-DD.md.
• Dreams (memory/dreaming/), working notes (memory/working/), archives — already excluded.

Related

• memory-promote — produces the wiki pointers this skill preserves.
• memory-capture — promote-at-capture writes wiki entries during normal capture.
• qmd-sync — keeps QMD aware of new wiki pointers within 30 min, so a freshly-pointered bullet is indexed before compact runs.
• session-cleanup (eod path) — calls this skill at end-of-day (Phase 0d-2 pending).