Continuous Context Preserver

Continuous session event recording for inter-session memory survival. Use when you want to persist conversation context between sessions, prevent memory loss...

Security Scan

The skill's requirements, instructions, and single cleanup script are consistent with its stated purpose of continuously logging compressed session summaries to local files; there are no unexpected network calls, credential requests, or installer steps.

Purpose & Capability

Name and description describe continuous local session logging; the SKILL.md and cleanup.sh implement exactly that (create session files, append compressed context, and delete old files). No unrelated credentials, binaries, or external services are requested.

Instruction Scope

Instructions are narrowly scoped to creating/maintaining session files, compressing summaries, and running a local cleanup script or cron job. They do not instruct reading other system config, exfiltrating data, or contacting external endpoints. They do ask the agent/operator to update AGENTS.md and HEARTBEAT.md (documentation) and to choose a retention period.

Install Mechanism

This is an instruction-only skill with no install spec; the only code is a simple, local shell cleanup script. Nothing is downloaded or executed from remote sources.

Credentials

No environment variables, credentials, or config paths are required. The cleanup script uses standard HOME-path defaults but allows overriding via safe environment variables (SESSIONS_DIR, LOG_FILE, RETENTION_DAYS).

Persistence & Privilege

Skill does write files under ~/.openclaw/workspace/sessions and logs under ~/.openclaw/workspace/logs and suggests a cron entry; it does not request always: true. Writing local files and scheduling cleanup is expected for this purpose, but it does grant persistent local data storage which has privacy implications.

Assessment

This skill appears coherent and local-only, but review these before enabling: 1) Inspect and, if necessary, harden file permissions on ~/.openclaw/workspace/sessions and logs to prevent other users/processes from reading sensitive conversation data. 2) Confirm the retention setting you choose (RETENTION_DAYS) is correct and that you or the agent will not accidentally set it to an unintended value. 3) If you will run the cleanup script via cron, verify the crontab entry and PATH/environment used by cron so the script runs as expected. 4) Consider encrypting highly sensitive notes or excluding them from session logs (the SKILL.md already advises compressing/omitting raw logs). 5) Always review the cleanup.sh file and test it on a non-production directory to ensure it deletes only what you expect.

Continuous Context Preserver (CCP)

Ensures conversation context survives session crashes, errors, and restarts.

The Problem

• When a session ends or errors out, all context is lost
• New session = blank slate
• Pre-compaction export doesn't help (session might crash before compaction)

The Solution

Continuous session logging. Write to a file throughout the conversation, not at a trigger point.

Setup

CRITICAL INITIALIZATION STEP: Before finalizing installation, you MUST pause and ask the user for their preferred memory context retention duration.

Ask the user: "How long would you like to keep the memory context logs? You can choose:"

• "7 days (default)"
• "10 days"
• "1 month (30 days)"
• "6 months (180 days)"

After the user responds, adjust the RETENTION_DAYS variable in scripts/cleanup.sh to match their choice (e.g., RETENTION_DAYS="30" for 1 month).

Then, after installing this skill, add to your AGENTS.md:

## Session Logging Protocol

At session start:
1. Create: `sessions/YYYY-MM-DD_session_N.md`
2. Log key points as conversation progresses

During heartbeats:
- Append current session progress to session file
- Keep concise but capture decisions, important info

And add to HEARTBEAT.md:

## Session Log Update
- Append key points to `sessions/YYYY-MM-DD_session_N.md`

Usage

At Session Start

# Create sessions folder if not exists
mkdir -p ~/.openclaw/workspace/sessions

# Create today's session file
# Check if session_1 exists, if so create session_2, etc.

During Session

Periodically append to the file by actively compressing the context:

• Only log key decisions made
• Important information discovered
• Context worth preserving
• Do NOT dump raw conversation logs
• Anything you'd want to know if this session crashed

File Format

sessions/
├── 2026-03-09_session_1.md
├── 2026-03-09_session_2.md   # if multiple sessions same day
├── 2026-03-08_session_1.md
└── ... (7 days rolling)

Template

# Session N - YYYY-MM-DD

**Started:** HH:MM TZ
**Status:** Active

## Topics Covered
- Topic 1
- Topic 2

## Key Decisions
- Decision 1
- Decision 2

## To Remember
- Important info
- Context for future sessions

Cleanup

Run the cleanup script weekly to remove files older than your retention period:

~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/continuous-context-preserver/scripts/cleanup.sh

Or add to crontab:

# Weekly cleanup (Sundays at midnight)
0 0 * * 0 ~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/continuous-context-preserver/scripts/cleanup.sh

Retention

• Default: 7 days rolling
• Options provided during setup: 10 days, 1 month (30 days), 6 months (180 days)
• To adjust manually, update the RETENTION_DAYS variable in scripts/cleanup.sh

Integration with Memory System

This complements, not replaces:

• MEMORY.md — Long-term curated memory
• memory/*.md — Daily notes
• mem0 — Semantic facts
• sessions/*.md — Full session context (safety net)

Session files are for crash recovery and recent context. MEMORY.md is for long-term wisdom.