Managing Semantic Memory with openclaw

I’ve often found myself staring at a blank terminal, trying to remember exactly where I saved a specific configuration detail or a piece of documentation. It’s a common frustration when your project grows and your mental map of the files starts to fade.

I like using semantic memory because it handles the heavy lifting of finding information based on meaning rather than just exact keywords. Here is how I use the openclaw memory tool to keep everything searchable and organized.

What You’ll Need

• An active memory plugin (the default is memory-core).
• A gateway version that supports secrets.resolve.

Quick Start

Getting your memory store ready takes just a few steps. I usually start by checking the current state of the index.

1. Check your status See if your memory store is active and if it includes any paths from your memorySearch.extraPaths configuration.

   openclaw memory status

2. Perform a deep probe If you want to verify that your vector and embedding services are actually available, use the deep flag.

   openclaw memory status --deep

3. Index your data To build the search index, run the index command. You can use --verbose to see details about providers, models, and batch activity.

   openclaw memory index --verbose

4. Search your memory Search for specific information using a natural language query.

   openclaw memory search "meeting notes"

If you need more specific results, you can limit the output or set a minimum score:

openclaw memory search --query "deployment" --max-results 20 --min-score 0.8

Note that if you provide both a positional query and the --query flag, the flag takes priority.

Troubleshooting

If you run into trouble, I’ve found these two situations are the most common:

• Unknown-method error: This happens if your gateway is outdated. This command requires a gateway that supports secrets.resolve to handle SecretRefs for API keys.
• Dirty store: If your store is out of sync, use openclaw memory status --index. This checks the status and automatically runs a reindex if it detects the store is dirty.

If you need to start completely over, you can force a full reindex:

openclaw memory index --force

For more help with your specific setup, check out the AI Setup Assistant.

What’s Next

• Memory Concept
• Plugins Documentation