Channel A file contract

Channel A is the offline file-based ContextPack producer path for host agents.

It exists so a host can keep running even when online MCP recall is unavailable:

1. ingest local JSONL observations idempotently
2. build a bounded ContextPack v1
3. write <packs-dir>/<agent>/latest.json
4. let the host skip missing or invalid files fail-open

Command

openclaw-mem-channel-a \
  --db /path/to/openclaw-mem.sqlite \
  --input-jsonl /path/to/observations.jsonl \
  --packs-dir /path/to/packs \
  --agent main \
  --query "current session memory" \
  --limit 8 \
  --budget-tokens 1200

The pack uses:

{"schema": "openclaw-mem.context-pack.v1"}

Observation JSONL shape

{"observationId":"obs-001","kind":"decision","text":"Keep ContextPack v1 stable.","ts":"2026-06-12T00:00:00Z"}

Rules:

• observationId is the idempotency key
• duplicate ids are skipped on retry
• UTF-8 BOM JSONL input is accepted
• text is required; legacy summary is not silently promoted to memory text
• <private>, [NOEXPORT], [PRIVATE], and [NOMEM] rows are skipped
• invalid rows are skipped and counted in the receipt

Migration note: producers that previously emitted only summary must emit text before relying on Channel A injection. Rows without text are treated as invalid instead of being converted implicitly.

Shared fixtures

Compatibility fixtures live in docs/fixtures/context-pack-v1-compat/.

They cover legal, oversized, missing-required-field, and ingest-idempotency cases.

Verification

uv run --python 3.13 --frozen pytest tests/test_channel_a.py tests/test_context_pack_v1_compat_fixtures.py