You start a new chat session every time you want your agent to do something. It feels clean—fresh context, fresh start. But each "fresh start" costs you the full system prompt re-load, and if the previous session had useful context, you just threw it away.
The Problem: The Hidden Cost of "New Session"
Every time you reset your OpenClaw session, the agent:
- Re-loads the entire system prompt — SOUL.md, all skills, personality directives. That's thousands of input tokens, paid fresh.
- Loses accumulated context — Previous conversation history, established facts, and intermediate results are gone.
- Re-discovers the same information — Your agent asks the same clarifying questions, re-reads the same files, and re-establishes the same state. You pay for all of it again.
If you're resetting 5–10 times per day, that's 5–10× the system prompt cost—plus duplicated work tokens.
How ClawBridge Detects This (Diagnostic A03)
The Cost Control Center analyzes your session patterns and flags excessive resets:
- Threshold: More than 3 new sessions per day on average.
- Calculation: (Average sessions/day × system prompt tokens × input price) vs. (continuing existing sessions).
- Estimated waste: The dollar cost of redundant system prompt re-loads.
One-Tap Fix
Tap Apply and ClawBridge adjusts your session behavior to prefer continuation over reset. The agent will maintain the existing context window and only start fresh when the context is actually full.
Trade-offs
- Context contamination: Long-running sessions can accumulate irrelevant context that confuses the agent. If your agent starts giving off-topic replies, a manual reset is appropriate.
- Task boundaries: If you're switching between completely unrelated tasks (e.g., from coding to email), a new session may be warranted.
- Works best with compaction: Pair this with Compaction Safeguard (A07) so long sessions don't create runaway context.
Real Numbers
System prompt with 3 skills ≈ 2,000 tokens. At Claude Sonnet pricing ($3/1M input tokens):
- 5 resets/day: 5 × 2,000 × $3/1M × 30 days = $0.90/mo in redundant prompts
- 10 resets/day: $1.80/mo
- Plus the duplicated "re-discovery" work: easily 2–5× the prompt cost.
Individually small, but combined with other diagnostics, these savings compound.
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