Best possible solution:

Land the shared formatter fix after normal exact-head CI and maintainer merge handling, keeping JSON output and persisted session keys unchanged.

Do we have a high-confidence way to reproduce the issue?

Yes. The linked issue gives a concrete CLI fixture, and current main's raw formatter slices make the dangling-surrogate failure clear from source inspection.

Is this the best way to solve the issue?

Yes. Updating the shared formatter is the narrowest maintainable fix because both affected table surfaces call it; caller-specific fixes or shortenText would duplicate behavior or lose the suffix semantics.

AGENTS.md: found and applied where relevant.

Codex review notes: model internal, reasoning high; reviewed against cd50d4983b2f.

Label changes:

• add P2: This is a deterministic CLI display bugfix with limited blast radius in session table output.
• add proof: sufficient: Contributor real behavior proof is sufficient. The PR body includes after-fix real CLI fixture output from Blacksmith Testbox plus an old-slice control showing the prior replacement-character failure.
• add rating: 🦞 diamond lobster: Overall readiness is 🦞 diamond lobster; proof is 🦞 diamond lobster and patch quality is 🦞 diamond lobster.
• add status: 👀 ready for maintainer look: ClawSweeper has no concrete contributor-facing blocker left for this PR. Sufficient (terminal): The PR body includes after-fix real CLI fixture output from Blacksmith Testbox plus an old-slice control showing the prior replacement-character failure.

Label justifications:

• P2: This is a deterministic CLI display bugfix with limited blast radius in session table output.
• rating: 🦞 diamond lobster: Overall readiness is 🦞 diamond lobster; proof is 🦞 diamond lobster and patch quality is 🦞 diamond lobster.
• status: 👀 ready for maintainer look: ClawSweeper has no concrete contributor-facing blocker left for this PR. Sufficient (terminal): The PR body includes after-fix real CLI fixture output from Blacksmith Testbox plus an old-slice control showing the prior replacement-character failure.
• proof: sufficient: Contributor real behavior proof is sufficient. The PR body includes after-fix real CLI fixture output from Blacksmith Testbox plus an old-slice control showing the prior replacement-character failure.

PR surface:

Source +1, Tests +14. Total +15 across 2 files.

What I checked:

• Repository policy read: Root AGENTS.md was read fully; its PR review, protected-label, source-history, and best-fix guidance shaped this review. (AGENTS.md:28, cd50d4983b2f)
• Current-main bug source: Current main still builds truncated session keys with raw key.slice(0, head) and key.slice(-6), which can return dangling surrogate halves at the reported boundaries. (src/commands/sessions-table.ts:111, cd50d4983b2f)
• Shared caller coverage: Both openclaw sessions and cleanup dry-run route their Key column through formatSessionKeyCell, so the shared formatter is the right owner boundary. (src/commands/sessions.ts:537, cd50d4983b2f)
• Safe helper contract: sliceUtf16Safe adjusts slice edges away from dangling surrogate pairs, and truncateUtf16Safe delegates to it; the package exports the ./utf16-slice subpath used by this PR. (packages/normalization-core/src/utf16-slice.ts:16, cd50d4983b2f)
• PR implementation: The PR head replaces raw prefix and suffix slicing with truncateUtf16Safe(key, head) and sliceUtf16Safe(key, -6) while preserving the shared formatter shape. (src/commands/sessions-table.ts:112, f4fa56da1449)
• Regression test: The added test places emoji across both retained boundaries and asserts the fixed-width cell renders without replacement characters while preserving the padded cell width. (src/commands/sessions-table.test.ts:6, f4fa56da1449)

Likely related people:

• steipete: Current checkout history blames the shared session-table formatter and existing UTF-16 helper to Peter Steinberger's recent squash commit, and the proposed fix is authored by the same GitHub user. (role: introduced behavior and recent area contributor; confidence: high; commits: 70bb770e6b3a, f4fa56da1449; files: src/commands/sessions-table.ts, src/commands/sessions.ts, src/commands/sessions-cleanup.ts)

• 🦀 challenger crab: rare, exceptional readiness with strong proof, clean implementation, and convincing validation.
• 🦞 diamond lobster: very strong readiness with only minor maintainer review expected.
• 🐚 platinum hermit: good normal PR, likely mergeable with ordinary maintainer review.
• 🦐 gold shrimp: useful signal, but proof or patch confidence is still limited.
• 🦪 silver shellfish: thin signal; proof, validation, or implementation needs work.
• 🧂 unranked krab: not merge-ready because proof is missing/unusable or there are serious correctness or safety concerns.
• 🌊 off-meta tidepool: rating does not apply to this item.

Shiny media proof means a screenshot, video, or linked artifact directly shows the changed behavior. Runtime, network, CSP, and security claims still need visible diagnostics.

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