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

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

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