Add openclaw sessions reset <session-id> subcommand

[arun-gupta]

Problem Statement

There is currently no CLI command to reset a specific session. When a session becomes corrupted (e.g. after a lock failure via the Telegram bridge), the only recovery path is to manually delete .jsonl and sessions.json files from inside the sandbox — which requires knowing the file paths and having sandbox shell access.

Proposed Design

A reset subcommand on openclaw sessions would make this recoverable without manual file system intervention:

  openclaw sessions reset main
  openclaw sessions reset tg-8689248858

Current workaround:

  rm /sandbox/.openclaw-data/agents/main/sessions/*.jsonl
  rm /sandbox/.openclaw-data/agents/main/sessions/sessions.json

Alternatives Considered

No response

Category

enhancement: feature

Checklist

• I searched existing issues and this is not a duplicate
• This is a design proposal, not a "please build this" request

[wscurran]

✨ Thanks for submitting this proposal with a detailed summary, it addresses a CLI usability concern and proposes a feature to add an openclaw sessions reset subcommand, which could improve the CLI usability and session management of NemoClaw.

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Possibly related open PRs:
#862 fix: auto-reset telegram bridge session after lock failure,
#880 chore(docker, openclaw): Updating openclaw to 2026.3.13 as per https:…,
#860 fix: queue telegram bridge messages per chat to prevent session lock contention

[dknos]

Manual workaround via SSH until a CLI command exists

Until openclaw sessions reset is implemented, here's the SSH-based approach we use to reset a corrupted session from outside the sandbox:

SANDBOX="my-assistant"
SSH_CONF=$(mktemp /tmp/nemoclaw-XXXXXX.conf)
openshell sandbox ssh-config "$SANDBOX" > "$SSH_CONF"

# Clear all lock files (prevents re-locking on next start)
ssh -T -F "$SSH_CONF" "openshell-${SANDBOX}" \
  'find /sandbox/.openclaw-data -name "*.lock" -delete 2>/dev/null'

# Optional: back up sessions before wiping
ssh -T -F "$SSH_CONF" "openshell-${SANDBOX}" \
  'cat /sandbox/.openclaw/agents/main/sessions/sessions.json' > ~/sessions-backup.json 2>/dev/null

# Reset sessions
ssh -T -F "$SSH_CONF" "openshell-${SANDBOX}" \
  'rm -f /sandbox/.openclaw/agents/main/sessions/sessions.json
   rm -f /sandbox/.openclaw-data/agents/main/sessions/*.jsonl
   rm -f /sandbox/.openclaw-data/agents/main/sessions/*.jsonl.lock'

rm -f "$SSH_CONF"
echo "Session reset complete"

The agent picks up a clean session on the next message. Wrapping this in a nemoclaw <name> session-reset shell alias is a reasonable stopgap until the proper CLI command ships.