OpenClaw Beginner 07 | Safety and Troubleshooting

Goal: diagnose issues quickly and upgrade safely without losing memory or behavior.

1. Four common failure patterns

Type	Symptom	Typical cause
Memory loss	New session misses old facts	missing/incomplete MEMORY.md
Context drop	Forgets earlier thread details	context saturation
Behavior drift	style/logic suddenly off	prompt contamination
No response	system appears down	gateway/network/permission issue

2. Four-step triage

1. Check gateway status
2. Restart gateway if needed
3. Check context usage and archive if high
4. Verify core files exist and are readable

3. Fix behavior drift

1. Open a fresh conversation
2. Add explicit safety guardrail for the trigger pattern
3. Validate core rules in SOUL.md

4. Upgrade safely (before)

1. Backup memory/, skills/, knowledge/
2. Generate an upgrade summary file
3. Record critical settings (schedules, keys, special rules)

5. Upgrade recovery (after)

1. Verify file paths and readability
2. Load upgrade summary
3. Reinitialize key heartbeat tasks

6. Safety baseline

1. Enable authentication
2. Do not expose management port directly to public internet
3. Use trusted Skill sources
4. Keep memory backups
5. Delay production upgrades until early feedback is clear

7. Completion checklist

1. You can classify issues by pattern
2. You can perform gateway and context triage
3. You can run safe pre/post-upgrade steps