r/AskClaw

20260819 I don't see a resolved or closed tag I could add but bottom line my arch nemesis, assumptions, reared it's ugly head and exasperated this problem. I had workspace pointing to a different directory than all the workspace files I created. Once I corrected that and restarted gateway those .md files were processed, applied and the BOOTSTRAP.md file removed. Also MEMORY.md was generated with info from the bootstraping.

I'm trying to use openclaw in a well provisioned pve trixie vm. I let curl -fsSL https://openclaw.ai/install.sh | bash install node in userspace. I configured the model using my dedicated lenovo p920 trixie with rtx 3090 dedicated to compute as ollama server with qwen2.5-coder.7b as the model. This process didn't seem to kickoff the onboarding but I fired it off with openclaw onboard --clasic (I'm not sure it completed as I saw some log errors about missing taiscale. I don't need tailscale in this vm it can reach the ollama server just fine on the same /24.) My very first chat resulted in the error.

This image shows how often I get this message.

A bit more background I had another vm running the same configuration successfully for more than a day with some long chats and some skill creation with the workbench flow as well as the ha-mcp mcp up. Eventually it came up with this same problem. once I see that COMPACTED HISTORY message no further chatting completes. Hence the attempt at a clean install on a new vm without any awareness of previous installs.

On both installs there was no default / templated MEMORY.md

https://preview.redd.it/2xs99sy3yzjh1.png?width=2161&format=png&auto=webp&s=0582ee0cf268f37eecabdab68ae5812470e66831

Hi,I built Human Gate for OpenClaw because I wanted agents to remain useful without giving them an unlimited execution pass.

It is a TypeScript plugin that intercepts tool calls before execution and routes risky calls through OpenClaw's built-in approval flow.

Examples:

- reads can pass automatically

- tests and development commands can request approval

- force-pushes, recursive deletion, remote pipe-to-shell, and OpenClaw config writes are treated as critical

- approval previews are bounded and redact common secret-like values

- remembered approvals are session-local and expire

- denied actions can enter a short cooldown instead of repeatedly prompting

The project is here:

https://github.com/freshxiaoyao/openclaw-human-gate

Current target: OpenClaw >= 2026.7.1.

I would appreciate feedback from people running real OpenClaw workflows, especially:

Which calls should be auto-approved?
Which calls produce annoying false positives?
Is the approval explanation clear enough?
Should approval reuse be path-scoped, category-scoped, or disabled by default?

This is an early project, so bug reports and design criticism are more useful than general encouragement.

Excessive; COMPACTED HISTORY

[Project] Human Gate: a fail-closed approval firewall for OpenClaw agent tool calls