PhoenixClaw: Zero-Tag Passive Journaling

PhoenixClaw automatically distills daily conversations into meaningful reflections using semantic intelligence.

Automatically identifies journal-worthy moments, patterns, and growth opportunities.

🛠️ Core Workflow

[!critical] MANDATORY: Complete Workflow Execution This 9-step workflow MUST be executed in full regardless of invocation method:

• •Cron execution (10 PM nightly)
• •Manual invocation ("Show me my journal", "Generate today's journal", etc.)
• •Regeneration requests ("Regenerate my journal", "Update today's entry")

Never skip steps. Partial execution causes:

• •Missing images (session logs not scanned)
• •Missing finance data (Ledger plugin not triggered)
• •Incomplete journals (plugins not executed)

PhoenixClaw follows a structured pipeline to ensure consistency and depth:

1. •

   User Configuration: Check for ~/.phoenixclaw/config.yaml. If missing, initiate the onboarding flow defined in references/user-config.md.

2. •

   Context Retrieval:

   • •Call memory_get for the current day's memory
   • •CRITICAL: Scan ALL raw session logs and filter by message timestamp. Session files are often split across multiple files. Do NOT classify images by session file mtime:
     bash

     # Read candidate session files (all or recent), then filter each message by timestamp
     TODAY=$(date +%Y-%m-%d)
     find ~/.openclaw/sessions -name "*.jsonl" -print0 |
       xargs -0 jq -cr --arg day "$TODAY" '
         select((.timestamp // "")[:10] == $day)
       '
     

     Read all matching files regardless of their numeric naming (e.g., file_22, file_23 may be earlier in name but still contain today's messages).
   • •EXTRACT IMAGES FROM SESSION LOGS: Session logs contain type: "image" entries with file paths. You MUST:
     1. •Find all image entries (e.g., "type":"image")
     2. •Keep only entries where message timestamp is in the target date range
     3. •Extract the file_path or url fields
     4. •Copy files into assets/YYYY-MM-DD/
     5. •Rename with descriptive names when possible
   • •Why session logs are mandatory: memory_get returns text only. Image metadata, photo references, and media attachments are only available in session logs. Skipping session logs = missing all photos.
   • •Edge case - Midnight boundary: For late-night activity that spans midnight, expand the timestamp range to include spillover windows (for example, previous day 23:00-24:00) and still filter per-message by timestamp.
   • •If memory is sparse, reconstruct context from session logs, then update daily memory
   • •Incorporate historical context via memory_search (skip if embeddings unavailable)
3. •

   Moment Identification: Identify "journal-worthy" content: critical decisions, emotional shifts, milestones, or shared media. See references/media-handling.md for photo processing. This step generates the moments data structure that plugins depend on. Image Processing (CRITICAL):

   • •For each extracted image, generate descriptive alt-text via Vision Analysis
   • •Categorize images (food, selfie, screenshot, document, etc.)
   • •Match images to moments (e.g., breakfast photo → breakfast moment)
   • •Store image metadata with moments for journal embedding
4. •

   Pattern Recognition: Detect recurring themes, mood fluctuations, and energy levels. Map these to growth opportunities using references/skill-recommendations.md.

5. •

   Plugin Execution: Execute all registered plugins at their declared hook points. See references/plugin-protocol.md for the complete plugin lifecycle:

   • •pre-analysis → before conversation analysis
   • •post-moment-analysis → Ledger and other primary plugins execute here
   • •post-pattern-analysis → after patterns detected
   • •journal-generation → plugins inject custom sections
   • •post-journal → after journal complete
6. •

   Journal Generation: Synthesize the day's events into a beautiful Markdown file using assets/daily-template.md. Follow the visual guidelines in references/visual-design.md. Include all plugin-generated sections at their declared section_order positions.

   • •Embed curated images only, not every image. Prioritize highlights and moments.
   • •Route finance screenshots to Ledger sections (receipts, invoices, transaction proofs).
   • •Use Obsidian format from references/media-handling.md with descriptive captions.
7. •

   Timeline Integration: If significant events occurred, append them to the master index in timeline.md using the format from assets/timeline-template.md and references/obsidian-format.md.

8. •

   Growth Mapping: Update growth-map.md (based on assets/growth-map-template.md) if new behavioral patterns or skill interests are detected.

9. •

   Profile Evolution: Update the long-term user profile (profile.md) to reflect the latest observations on values, goals, and personality traits. See references/profile-evolution.md and assets/profile-template.md.

⏰ Cron & Passive Operation

PhoenixClaw is designed to run without user intervention. It utilizes OpenClaw's built-in cron system to trigger its analysis daily at 10:00 PM local time (0 22 * * *).

• •Setup details can be found in references/cron-setup.md.
• •Mode: Primarily Passive. The AI proactively summarizes the day's activities without being asked.

💬 Explicit Triggers

While passive by design, users can interact with PhoenixClaw directly using these phrases:

• •"Show me my journal for today/yesterday."
• •"What did I accomplish today?"
• •"Analyze my mood patterns over the last week."
• •"Generate my weekly/monthly summary."
• •"How am I doing on my personal goals?"
• •"Regenerate my journal." / "重新生成日记"

[!warning] Manual Invocation = Full Pipeline When users request journal generation/regeneration, you MUST execute the complete 9-step Core Workflow above. This ensures:

• •Photos are included (via session log scanning)
• •Ledger plugin runs (via post-moment-analysis hook)
• •All plugins execute (at their respective hook points)

Common mistakes to avoid:

• •❌ Only calling memory_get (misses photos)
• •❌ Skipping moment identification (plugins never trigger)
• •❌ Generating journal directly without plugin sections

📚 Documentation Reference

References (references/)

• •user-config.md: Initial onboarding and persistence settings.
• •cron-setup.md: Technical configuration for nightly automation.
• •plugin-protocol.md: Plugin architecture, hook points, and integration protocol.
• •media-handling.md: Strategies for extracting meaning from photos and rich media.
• •visual-design.md: Layout principles for readability and aesthetics.
• •obsidian-format.md: Ensuring compatibility with Obsidian and other PKM tools.
• •profile-evolution.md: How the system maintains a long-term user identity.
• •skill-recommendations.md: Logic for suggesting new skills based on journal insights.

Assets (assets/)

• •daily-template.md: The blueprint for daily journal entries.
• •weekly-template.md: The blueprint for high-level weekly summaries.
• •profile-template.md: Structure for the profile.md persistent identity file.
• •timeline-template.md: Structure for the timeline.md chronological index.
• •growth-map-template.md: Structure for the growth-map.md thematic index.