OpenClaw’s vector retrieval silently failed — but BM25 text search kept the memory system running for two weeks unnoticed. Should you even bother fixing it? Here’s how I used NVIDIA’s free embedding API to complete the picture at zero cost.
OpenClaw’s daily-ai-news cron job kept timing out. The root cause: a missing absolute path in the SKILL.md caused the Agent to spend 15 exec calls searching for a tool every run. Messages 165→54, exec calls 44→7 — one file path beat any algorithm optimization.
A full-chain production battle log: from startup failures and Feishu message silent drops to production stability — compaction safeguard, five-layer debugging, model-harness fit, and memory system comparison.