Pi adapter: support OPENCLAW_STATE_DIR and multi-agent session directories

[efacsen]

Problem

The Pi adapter hardcodes the session directory to ~/.openclaw/agents/main/sessions/. This doesn't work for:

1. Custom state directories — OpenClaw supports OPENCLAW_STATE_DIR env var to relocate the state directory (common for staging/production setups on the same machine, documented here)
2. Multi-agent setups — OpenClaw supports multiple named agents under agents/<agentId>/sessions/ (see docs/pi.md), but the adapter only reads agents/main/

My setup

I run staging and production OpenClaw on the same VPS with separate state dirs and multiple agents:

$STAGING_STATE_DIR/agents/agent-a/sessions/   (8 sessions)
$STAGING_STATE_DIR/agents/main/sessions/      (17 sessions)
$PRODUCTION_STATE_DIR/agents/main/sessions/   (31 sessions)

The adapter finds none of these — it only reads ~/.openclaw/agents/main/sessions/.

Proposed Solution

Two small changes:

1. Respect OPENCLAW_STATE_DIR env var

func resolveBaseDir() string {
    if dir := os.Getenv("OPENCLAW_STATE_DIR"); dir != "" {
        return dir
    }
    home, _ := os.UserHomeDir()
    return filepath.Join(home, ".openclaw")
}

2. Scan agents/*/sessions/ instead of just agents/main/sessions/

// Glob all agent directories
entries, _ := os.ReadDir(filepath.Join(baseDir, "agents"))
for _, e := range entries {
    sessDir := filepath.Join(baseDir, "agents", e.Name(), "sessions")
    // add to watch list
}

Impact

• CWD filtering still works correctly (each session has its own cwd in the header)
• The watcher watches all agent directories with fsnotify
• Session names remain unique (UUIDs)
• No API changes needed — just broader discovery

Usage

# Point sidecar at a specific OpenClaw instance
OPENCLAW_STATE_DIR=/path/to/state sidecar

I've already built a working patch locally — happy to submit a PR if you'd prefer that. All 42 existing Pi adapter tests pass with the changes.

[viperfx]

Wanted to also add that the regular pi agent should be supported. e.g if you just launched pi in your project dir and used the agent (without openclaw).

Does your patch work for the regular pi agent?

[efacsen]

@viperfx The short answer to your question: no, but the current upstream code also doesn't — the adapter was always OpenClaw-specific.

Right now upstream hardcodes ~/.openclaw/agents/main/sessions/, which is where OpenClaw puts sessions. Standalone pi (badlogic/pi-mono) uses a different path: ~/.pi/agent/sessions/ (or whatever you set with PI_CODING_AGENT_DIR). The session format (JSONL) is the same though — OpenClaw uses pi's format internally.

My patch changes discovery from:

~/.openclaw/agents/main/sessions/        (upstream, hardcoded)

to:

$OPENCLAW_STATE_DIR/agents/*/sessions/   (env var + multi-agent glob)
~/.openclaw/agents/*/sessions/           (fallback)

For standalone pi support we could add something like:

// Standalone pi: PI_CODING_AGENT_DIR or ~/.pi/agent
piBase := os.Getenv("PI_CODING_AGENT_DIR")
if piBase == "" {
    piBase = filepath.Join(home, ".pi", "agent")
}
piSess := filepath.Join(piBase, "sessions")
if info, _ := os.Stat(piSess); info != nil && info.IsDir() {
    dirs = append(dirs, piSess)
}

The formats are identical so it's just about path discovery. Hope this helps