OpenClaw session sync — continue on any device

Last updated 2026-09-17 · MIT licensed · free for personal self-hosting

OpenClaw is the one agent with a two-step setup: its built-in MCP server starts lazily, so registering the client alone will not sync anything — you also need a resident process running the sync loop.

Where OpenClaw keeps its sessions

Item Value
Session index ~/.openclaw/agents/<id>/sessions/sessions.json
Session content <sessionId>.jsonl alongside it
Session identity the transcript UUID; the index key lives in meta.openclaw:session_key

Connecting it (two steps)

Step one — same as every other agent. Open the setup help page, pick OpenClaw, download the client package (server address pre-filled), run install-deps.bat (Windows) or ./install-deps.sh (macOS / Linux), then register with the generated command — your workspace API key is already filled in. The client starts as HERMES_SYNC_AGENT=openclaw.

Step two — install the resident sync process (OpenClaw only). The setup help page offers a one-shot install script (PowerShell and Git Bash variants). Unpack it next to the client's mcp/ directory and run it: it registers a boot-persistent auto-sync, so you never start the process by hand.

download + unpack the client → run the auto-sync installer → confirm autostart is registered

Behaviour worth knowing

  • Index and content are maintained separately — session content is appended to JSONL files while the session list is kept in sessions.json.
  • The gateway hot-reloads the index (by mtime), so new sessions appear without restarting it.
  • The gateway may rewrite the index — it overwrites sessions.json when writing its own sessions. To reduce the race, re-pull after the gateway has written (manual sync from the web console, or just wait for the next 5-minute cycle).
  • The resident process is not optional — without step two nothing syncs. That is OpenClaw's lazy MCP startup, not a misconfiguration.

Across devices, across agents

Once the resident sync is running, OpenClaw's sessions join the pool like any other agent's: another machine's OpenClaw, or Hermes, or OpenCode, can all read them and continue. For a long-lived assistant-style agent this matters even more than for a coding agent — switching machines should not mean introducing yourself again.