OpenClaw memory system guide for stable agents

Your @openclaw  agent works perfectly for 20 minutes. Then it silently forgets your instructions and goes rogue.

The fix isn't better prompts. It's understanding how memory actually works.

I'm an OpenClaw maintainer. After 2+ months of daily use, I ended up with a memory system where my agent remembers decisions from weeks ago, checks its notes before acting, and picks up exactly where it left off after every restart:

0:00 The real reason your agent forgets
1:59 Quick start: 3 things that matter most
3:01 The 4 "memories" people confuse
4:52 3 failure modes: why your agent forgets
6:42 Compaction vs pruning
8:05 Prove what's loaded: /context list
10:06 What compaction actually does
13:42 Layer 1: pre-compaction memory flush
16:27 Layer 2: manual saves + /compact trick
19:12 Layer 3: the file architecture
23:22 The memory protocol for AGENTS.md
26:06 Retrieval: Track A, A+, and QMD by @tobi 
31:59 Cost and cache
33:33 The complete config (copy and go)
36:35 5 things to remember