Description

memoryFlush never triggers for sessions that have never been compacted, because hasAlreadyFlushedForCurrentCompaction incorrectly returns true when both counters are 0.

Root Cause

In hasAlreadyFlushedForCurrentCompaction:

function hasAlreadyFlushedForCurrentCompaction(entry) {
  const compactionCount = entry.compactionCount ?? 0;
  const lastFlushAt = entry.memoryFlushCompactionCount;
  return typeof lastFlushAt === "number" && lastFlushAt === compactionCount;
}

When a session has:

• compactionCount: 0 (never compacted)
• memoryFlushCompactionCount: 0 (never flushed, or explicitly set to 0)

The function returns 0 === 0 → true, incorrectly indicating "already flushed", so flush is skipped.

Observed Behavior

// Session entry
{
  "totalTokens": 122985,      // > 80k threshold
  "totalTokensFresh": true,
  "compactionCount": 0,
  "memoryFlushCompactionCount": 0
}

Expected: memoryFlush should trigger (tokens > threshold, never flushed)
Actual: memoryFlush skipped because hasAlreadyFlushedForCurrentCompaction returns true

Suggested Fix

Option A: Check for undefined separately:

function hasAlreadyFlushedForCurrentCompaction(entry) {
  const compactionCount = entry.compactionCount ?? 0;
  const lastFlushAt = entry.memoryFlushCompactionCount;
  // Never flushed if undefined
  if (typeof lastFlushAt !== "number") return false;
  return lastFlushAt === compactionCount;
}

Option B: Use -1 or null as "never flushed" sentinel instead of 0.

Environment

• OpenClaw: 2026.3.13 (61d171a)
• OS: macOS (Darwin 25.3.0 arm64)

Impact

All sessions that grow past the flush threshold but have never been compacted will never auto-flush, leading to unbounded context growth until manual intervention.

Related

See also #47111 (qmd auto-update not firing) - separate issue but discovered during same investigation.