A developer on r/openclaw shares their journey tuning AI memory for real-time session transcript recall on OpenClaw. Running on an Intel iMac (i7-4771, 16GB RAM) with OpenClaw 2026.6.8 and MemPalace 3.4.1, they've cycled through built-in memorySearch, QMD, and an MCP-based MemPalace with ChromaDB. The result: a pragmatic split strategy because no single system handles real-time indexing reliably.

Current Setup: Split Recall

Both systems are active. The split is enforced in workspace files (AGENTS.md, SOUL.md, MEMORY.md, TOOLS.md, USER.md, IDENTITY.md):

• Recent conversations → built-in memorySearch (re-enabled today after a long disable)
• Older/deep semantic search → mempalace_search

The Indexing Pipeline

• Built-in: Indexes session JSONL via experimental sessionMemory with debounced delta thresholds.
• MemPalace: Batch-indexes via cron every 2 hours (8am–10pm).

Both openclaw memory status and mempalace status show active index updates. Commands used for MemPalace mining:

# Mine session transcripts (conversations mode)
mempalace mine ~/.openclaw/agents/main/sessions/ --mode convos --wing sessions

Mine workspace files (config, memory, agents, etc.)
mempalace mine ~/.openclaw/workspace/ --wing workspace

These run from mempalace-reindex.sh every 2 hours via cron.

What's Still Broken

• Real-time session indexing is unreliable — MemPalace is purely batch/pull and doesn't watch file changes (even running every 5 minutes showed no improvement).
• Two search tools create confusion over which one the agent reaches for.
• startupContext isn't loading dated markdown files into new sessions.
• Symlink bug on Mac (MemPalace ≤3.3.4) skips JSONL files — even after upgrade to 3.4.1 the issue persisted.

Previous Attempts

The author tried QMD for better search and knowledge graphs, but each search spawned a new process and overwhelmed the Intel iMac. MemPalace was the MCP replacement, but batch-only indexing forced the split approach. At one point they disabled built-in search entirely to force single-source truth, but re-enabled it today to get recent session recall working.

Key Takeaways

Session conversations need to be indexed within 5–10 minutes of delta changes, based on actual session transcripts (not summarised markdown). New sessions should inject recent context automatically after the first prompt — neither system fully delivers this today.