Summary

/status (session_status) in chat can include stale/noisy task context that feels unrelated to the current conversation state.

In our Telegram topic sessions, the 📌 Tasks: line kept surfacing old completed subagent work (and previously, synthetic internal task text), even when there were no active tasks.

What I observed

• session_status builds the task line from listTasksForRelatedSessionKeyForOwner(...) and includes latest task context even when there are 0 active tasks.
• In practice, this keeps old completed subagent jobs visible in /status for that session/topic.
• Previously, synthetic task rows also appeared in status context:
  • OpenClaw runtime context (internal): ...
  • async followup artifacts (An async command did not run..., An async command the user already approved has completed...)

Exact cleanup I performed (production state DB)

SQLite DB: ~/.openclaw/tasks/runs.sqlite

1. Removed synthetic terminal task rows across sessions (plus delivery-state rows)

• Match criteria:
  • runtime='cli'
  • status IN ('succeeded','failed','cancelled','timed_out','lost')
  • task text contains one of:
    • OpenClaw runtime context (internal):
    • An async command did not run.
    • An async command the user already approved has completed.
• Removed: 15 rows
• Backup: ~/.openclaw/tasks/runs.sqlite.bak-20260331-214143-synthetic-clean

2. Removed completed Telegram-topic subagent rows (plus delivery-state rows)

• Match criteria:
  • runtime='subagent'
  • owner_key LIKE 'agent:main:telegram:group:-1003826723328:topic:%'
  • status IN ('succeeded','failed','cancelled','timed_out','lost')
• Removed: 10 rows
• Backup: ~/.openclaw/tasks/runs.sqlite.bak-20260331-215741-tg-subagent-clean
• Removed task_ids:
  • 12cbc768-b53e-4500-809d-da6dfe0a28a9
  • add11ddf-2545-43f5-91bf-7b8fb7b6bd2a
  • 52c5802c-e81b-48e3-950d-c5980d3c8cfe
  • fabfcae0-ab70-433d-93b9-9659502467ee
  • eed27730-d56c-4559-bb2c-da19d291d32e
  • 686eb40a-add1-4136-8ada-380635110ac3
  • c20898e4-89cc-4566-8d38-0537a0721ed6
  • 674c1529-964f-40d1-b322-79b2aa496cb2
  • fdb4f45b-23e2-4961-a82d-6f9c8aca4d06
  • 3d4e2eef-b86d-41d5-8807-00f09ef74ea0

Why this seems buggy

For chat UX, /status should prioritize current state. Showing old completed task context by default is noisy and misleading when there are no active tasks.

Suggested fix

• In session_status/buildStatusText task-line logic, prefer:
  1. show task line only when there are active tasks, or
  2. show only recent failures (short window), or
  3. gate “latest succeeded ...” behind an explicit verbose/debug mode.
• Also ensure synthetic internal followup/runtime-context tasks are never treated as user-facing status context.