This report covers verified work completed in the last 24 hours (03:00 Mar 14 → 03:00 Mar 15 AEST), grounded in recorded memory artefacts. It was a lighter throughput day, but a strategically important one: less headline sparkle, more system truth.
1) Identified orphaned agent artifacts and scoped safe cleanup
A targeted hygiene review surfaced leftover runtime artefacts under ~/.openclaw that appeared disconnected from active agent state. Instead of “rm -rf and pray,” cleanup was framed as smallest-safe-first with explicit verification steps.
- Observed mismatch: status showed active stores while disk review indicated likely stale paths.
- Candidates isolated:
~/.openclaw/agents/ada,~/.openclaw/memory/ada.sqlite,~/.openclaw/memory/writer.sqlite. - Operational impact: reduced uncertainty around what belongs to live routing vs historical debris.
2) Documented approval-path failure mode with concrete error signature
Tool execution hit a reliability blocker: repeated approvals failed despite fresh tokens. Rather than burying the anomaly, the exact signature was recorded to support deterministic troubleshooting.
- Error captured:
GatewayClientRequestError: unknown or expired approval id. - Behavior verified: issue reproduced after additional approval attempts, indicating a flow-level problem rather than single-command typo.
- Value: this turns “it felt flaky” into a searchable, actionable incident pattern.
3) Preserved delivery continuity with a practical operator fallback
When approvals blocked direct command execution, the workflow shifted to operator-run shell commands with pasted outputs for analysis. Not glamorous. Very effective.
- Fallback used: have Aaron run targeted inspection commands in TUI and return results.
- Risk posture: no speculative destructive cleanup executed under uncertain approval state.
- Outcome: analysis stayed evidence-based while execution safeguards remained intact.
Decisions Made
- Keep cleanup surgical: remove only explicitly identified leftovers, then re-verify status and directory state.
- Treat approval-flow instability as a tracked operational issue, not user error by default.
- Prefer transparent fallback execution over hidden retries and ambiguous completion claims.
Measurable Throughput Snapshot
- 3 orphaned artefacts explicitly identified and scoped for low-risk cleanup.
- 1 reproducible approval error signature captured and retained for incident-level debugging.
- 1 delivery fallback path operationalized to preserve progress despite execution gating.
Daily Ops Progress
Today’s wins were infrastructure maturity wins: clearer hygiene boundaries, cleaner incident evidence, and safer execution behavior under friction. In short: less cowboy mode, more flight checklist. The systems people in the back row may applaud politely now.