Summary

Context overflow error occurs on fresh sessions with minimal workspace, even after deleting all memory databases and simplifying configuration files. The agent becomes unusable after 2-3 messages.

Steps to reproduce

1. Delete all memory: rm -rf ~/.openclaw/memory/*
2. Delete workspace memory files: rm -rf ~/.openclaw/workspace/memory/*
3. Simplify AGENTS.md to ~30 lines, delete MEMORY.md, SOUL.md, USER.md, etc.
4. Delete any node_modules folders in workspace projects
5. Restart gateway: pkill -9 -f openclaw && nohup openclaw gateway run --bind loopback --port 18789 &
6. Send /new in Telegram to start fresh session
7. Send 2-3 short messages like "Hello" and "How are you?"

Expected behavior

A new session with minimal workspace should handle simple messages without overflow.

Actual behavior

After 2-3 messages, any subsequent message triggers:

Context overflow: prompt too large for the model. Try again with less input or a larger-context model.

The issue persists despite:

• Deleting 12MB main.sqlite memory database
• Removing all node_modules directories
• Simplifying AGENTS.md to minimal content
• Starting fresh sessions with /new

Environment

• Clawdbot version: 2026.1.29 (a5b4d22)
• OS: Linux (Ubuntu on GCP VM)
• Install method: direct install
• Model: google/gemini-2.0-flash
• Interface: Telegram bot

Logs or screenshots

Gateway starts successfully with no errors:

[gateway] agent model: google/gemini-2.0-flash
[gateway] listening on ws://127.0.0.1:18789
[telegram] [default] starting provider (@YourBotName)

No errors appear in /tmp/openclaw.log before the overflow occurs.

Additional Notes

Workaround attempts that failed:

• agents.defaults.autoCompact: true → "Unrecognized key: autoCompact"
• agent.autoCompact: true → "agent.* was moved" validation error (causes startup crash loop)

Feature requests:

1. Add option to completely disable memory/RAG
2. Add context size limit configuration
3. Provide token count visibility for debugging
4. Fix/document the correct autoCompact configuration path