Short Term Memory

Name: Short Term Memory
Rating: 3.5 (1 reviews)
Author: cjpraia

By cjpraia 👁 3 views ▲ 0 votes

Short-Term Memory Plugin for OpenClaw — automatic conversation context injection

GitHub

Configuration Example

{
  "ts": "2026-03-17T04:40:19.020Z",
  "turn": 354,
  "task": "qual a capital do Brasil?",
  "input": "qual a capital do Brasil?",
  "output": "A capital do Brasil é Brasília!",
  "tags": ["memory"]
}

README

# Short-Term Memory Plugin for OpenClaw

Automatic per-turn memory injection and recording — no LLM calls for writing.

## How It Works

1. **`before_prompt_build`** — reads the last 20 entries from `~/.openclaw/memory/short-term.jsonl` and injects them as `prependContext` so the agent sees recent conversation history.
2. **`agent_end`** — after each successful turn, extracts the last user message and assistant reply, builds a compact record, and appends it to the JSONL file. Fully synchronous (critical: `agent_end` is fire-and-forget).

No LLM tokens are spent on memory writing. Tags are extracted via keyword heuristics.

## Storage Format

Each line in `short-term.jsonl` is a JSON object:

```json
{
  "ts": "2026-03-17T04:40:19.020Z",
  "turn": 354,
  "task": "qual a capital do Brasil?",
  "input": "qual a capital do Brasil?",
  "output": "A capital do Brasil é Brasília!",
  "tags": ["memory"]
}
```

### Field Limits

| Field    | Max Length |
|----------|-----------|
| `task`   | 100 chars |
| `input`  | 200 chars |
| `output` | 300 chars |
| `tags`   | 5 items   |

### File Rotation

When the file reaches 10,000 entries, it is renamed to `short-term-YYYY-MM-DD.jsonl` and a fresh file starts.

## Installation

Copy this directory to `~/.openclaw/extensions/short-term-memory/`.

Add to `~/.openclaw/openclaw.json`:

```json
{
  "plugins": {
    "allow": ["short-term-memory"],
    "entries": {
      "short-term-memory": {
        "enabled": true
      }
    }
  }
}
```

Restart the gateway:

```bash
openclaw gateway restart
```

> **Important:** After editing `index.js`, always restart the gateway — the daemon caches loaded modules.

## Configuration

All settings are optional (defaults shown):

```json
{
  "plugins": {
    "entries": {
      "short-term-memory": {
        "enabled": true,
        "config": {
          "maxEntries": 10000,
          "maxInjectEntries": 20,
          "maxInputChars": 200,
          "maxOutputChars": 300,
          "maxTaskChars": 100,
          "maxTags": 5
        }
      }
    }
  }
}
```

## Key Implementation Details

- **Synchronous `agent_end` handler:** The `agent_end` hook is dispatched as fire-and-forget (not awaited). Async handlers may not complete before the CLI process exits. The handler uses only synchronous I/O (`appendFileSync`, `mkdirSync`).
- **Content block support:** Handles both string and array content formats (`[{ type: "text", text: "..." }]`).
- **Memory prefix stripping:** Strips the injected `## Recent Memory` block from user input before recording to avoid self-referential entries.
- **Plugin contract:** Follows `OpenClawPluginDefinition` — `module.exports = { id, register(api) { api.on(...) } }`. Same pattern as `extensions/diffs` and `extensions/memory-lancedb`.

## Compatibility

- OpenClaw 2026.3.14+
- Node 22+
- Hooks: `before_prompt_build`, `agent_end`

## License

MIT

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