OpenClaw Dreaming Setup

Configure and manage OpenClaw's Dreaming system — the background memory consolidation that promotes short-term notes into long-term MEMORY.md.

When to Use

• User wants to enable/configure Dreaming for automatic memory consolidation
• Checking dreaming status, phase health, or promotion history
• Troubleshooting blocked dreaming or heartbeat issues
• Managing dream diary (DREAMS.md)
• Manual memory promotion or backfill

What is Dreaming?

Dreaming automatically:

1. Light phase — stages recent daily notes and session transcripts
2. REM phase — extracts patterns and recurring themes
3. Deep phase — promotes strong signals into MEMORY.md

It runs as a background cron job tied to heartbeat.

Quick Setup

Enable Dreaming

Add to openclaw.json:

{
  plugins: {
    entries: {
      "memory-core": {
        config: {
          dreaming: {
            enabled: true,
            // Optional: custom schedule (default: 03:00 daily)
            frequency: "0 3 * * *",
            timezone: "Asia/Jerusalem",
          },
        },
      },
    },
  },
}

Then restart gateway: openclaw gateway restart

With Skill Workshop (recommended combo)

{
  plugins: {
    entries: {
      "memory-core": {
        config: {
          dreaming: {
            enabled: true,
          },
        },
      },
      "skill-workshop": {
        enabled: true,
        config: {
          autoCapture: true,
          approvalPolicy: "pending",
          reviewMode: "hybrid",
        },
      },
    },
  },
}

With Active Memory

{
  plugins: {
    entries: {
      "active-memory": {
        enabled: true,
        config: {
          enabled: true,
          agents: ["main"],
          allowedChatTypes: ["direct"],
          modelFallback: "zai/glm-5-turbo",
          queryMode: "recent",
          promptStyle: "balanced",
          timeoutMs: 15000,
        },
      },
      "memory-core": {
        config: {
          dreaming: { enabled: true },
        },
      },
    },
  },
}

Commands Reference

Check Status

# Via slash command (in chat)
/dreaming status

# Via CLI
openclaw memory status --deep

Manual Promotion

# Preview what would be promoted
openclaw memory promote

# Apply promotion
openclaw memory promote --apply

# Limit candidates
openclaw memory promote --limit 5

# Explain why a specific topic would/wouldn't promote
openclaw memory promote-explain "claw-earn wallet"

Dream Diary

# View dream diary
cat ~/openclaw-data/workspace/DREAMS.md

# View specific phase reports
ls ~/openclaw-data/workspace/memory/dreaming/
cat ~/openclaw-data/workspace/memory/dreaming/deep/2026-04-24.md

REM Harness (preview without writing)

# Preview REM reflections
openclaw memory rem-harness

# Preview as JSON
openclaw memory rem-harness --json

Historical Backfill

# Preview grounded diary from past notes
openclaw memory rem-harness --path memory/2026-04-23.md --grounded

# Apply backfill
openclaw memory rem-backfill --path memory/2026-04-23.md

# Stage for deep promotion
openclaw memory rem-backfill --path memory/2026-04-23.md --stage-short-term

# Rollback if needed
openclaw memory rem-backfill --rollback

Dreaming Phase Model

Phase	Purpose	Writes to MEMORY.md?
Light	Sort and stage recent notes	No
REM	Extract patterns and themes	No
Deep	Promote strong candidates	Yes

Deep ranking signals:

• Frequency (0.24) — how often the topic appears
• Relevance (0.30) — retrieval quality
• Query diversity (0.15) — different contexts
• Recency (0.15) — time-decayed freshness
• Consolidation (0.10) — multi-day recurrence
• Conceptual richness (0.06) — tag density

Troubleshooting

Problem	Check
Dreaming never runs	heartbeat.every must be > 0 (e.g., 30m)
Status shows "blocked"	Default agent needs heartbeat enabled
No promotions	Need more daily notes and variety
MEMORY.md growing too fast	Adjust minScore threshold

Heartbeat dependency

Dreaming rides the default agent's heartbeat. If heartbeat is broken:

1. Check agents.defaults.heartbeat.every — must be positive (e.g., "30m")
2. Don't override heartbeat on a specific agent without including the default
3. /dreaming status will say "blocked" if heartbeat is missing

Important Notes

• Dreaming is opt-in and disabled by default
• Default schedule: 03:00 daily (configurable via frequency)
• Only grounded memory snippets are promoted, not diary entries
• DREAMS.md is for human reading; MEMORY.md is for the agent
• Promotion is reversible via --rollback