openclaw/docs/reference/transcript-hygiene.md

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Reference: provider-specific transcript sanitization and repair rules	You are debugging provider request rejections tied to transcript shape You are changing transcript sanitization or tool-call repair logic You are investigating tool-call id mismatches across providers	Transcript Hygiene

Transcript Hygiene (Provider Fixups)

This document describes provider-specific fixes applied to transcripts before a run (building model context). These are in-memory adjustments used to satisfy strict provider requirements. These hygiene steps do not rewrite the stored JSONL transcript on disk; however, a separate session-file repair pass may rewrite malformed JSONL files by dropping invalid lines before the session is loaded. When a repair occurs, the original file is backed up alongside the session file.

Scope includes:

• Tool call id sanitization
• Tool call input validation
• Tool result pairing repair
• Turn validation / ordering
• Thought signature cleanup
• Image payload sanitization
• User-input provenance tagging (for inter-session routed prompts)

If you need transcript storage details, see:

• /reference/session-management-compaction

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Where this runs

All transcript hygiene is centralized in the embedded runner:

• Policy selection: src/agents/transcript-policy.ts
• Sanitization/repair application: sanitizeSessionHistory in src/agents/pi-embedded-runner/google.ts

The policy uses provider, modelApi, and modelId to decide what to apply.

Separate from transcript hygiene, session files are repaired (if needed) before load:

• repairSessionFileIfNeeded in src/agents/session-file-repair.ts
• Called from run/attempt.ts and compact.ts (embedded runner)

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Global rule: image sanitization

Image payloads are always sanitized to prevent provider-side rejection due to size limits (downscale/recompress oversized base64 images).

Implementation:

• sanitizeSessionMessagesImages in src/agents/pi-embedded-helpers/images.ts
• sanitizeContentBlocksImages in src/agents/tool-images.ts

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Global rule: malformed tool calls

Assistant tool-call blocks that are missing both input and arguments are dropped before model context is built. This prevents provider rejections from partially persisted tool calls (for example, after a rate limit failure).

Implementation:

• sanitizeToolCallInputs in src/agents/session-transcript-repair.ts
• Applied in sanitizeSessionHistory in src/agents/pi-embedded-runner/google.ts

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Global rule: inter-session input provenance

When an agent sends a prompt into another session via sessions_send (including agent-to-agent reply/announce steps), OpenClaw persists the created user turn with:

• message.provenance.kind = "inter_session"

This metadata is written at transcript append time and does not change role (role: "user" remains for provider compatibility). Transcript readers can use this to avoid treating routed internal prompts as end-user-authored instructions.

During context rebuild, OpenClaw also prepends a short [Inter-session message] marker to those user turns in-memory so the model can distinguish them from external end-user instructions.

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Provider matrix (current behavior)

OpenAI / OpenAI Codex

• Image sanitization only.
• On model switch into OpenAI Responses/Codex, drop orphaned reasoning signatures (standalone reasoning items without a following content block).
• No tool call id sanitization.
• No tool result pairing repair.
• No turn validation or reordering.
• No synthetic tool results.
• No thought signature stripping.

Google (Generative AI / Gemini CLI / Antigravity)

• Tool call id sanitization: strict alphanumeric.
• Tool result pairing repair and synthetic tool results.
• Turn validation (Gemini-style turn alternation).
• Google turn ordering fixup (prepend a tiny user bootstrap if history starts with assistant).
• Antigravity Claude: normalize thinking signatures; drop unsigned thinking blocks.

Anthropic / Minimax (Anthropic-compatible)

• Tool result pairing repair and synthetic tool results.
• Turn validation (merge consecutive user turns to satisfy strict alternation).

Mistral (including model-id based detection)

• Tool call id sanitization: strict9 (alphanumeric length 9).

OpenRouter Gemini

• Thought signature cleanup: strip non-base64 thought_signature values (keep base64).

Everything else

• Image sanitization only.

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Historical behavior (pre-2026.1.22)

Before the 2026.1.22 release, OpenClaw applied multiple layers of transcript hygiene:

• A transcript-sanitize extension ran on every context build and could:
  • Repair tool use/result pairing.
  • Sanitize tool call ids (including a non-strict mode that preserved _/-).
• The runner also performed provider-specific sanitization, which duplicated work.
• Additional mutations occurred outside the provider policy, including:
  • Stripping <final> tags from assistant text before persistence.
  • Dropping empty assistant error turns.
  • Trimming assistant content after tool calls.

This complexity caused cross-provider regressions (notably openai-responses call_id|fc_id pairing). The 2026.1.22 cleanup removed the extension, centralized logic in the runner, and made OpenAI no-touch beyond image sanitization.