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Migrating your OpenClaw brain to modusbrain v0.41.2.0 (greenfield)

The v0.41.2.0 lens packs ship a one-shot importer that re-ingests your existing OpenClaw brain (~/git/brain/atoms/, concepts/, ideas/) through the new ingestion cathedral. Pages land in modusbrain with an imported_from: markdown-greenfield frontmatter marker so the new extract_atoms + synthesize_concepts cycle phases skip them (lossless import with provenance).

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Before you migrate

  1. Upgrade modusbrain to v0.41.2.0+:
  2. Activate the creator pack (or modusbrain-everything if you also want investor + engineer lenses on the same brain):
  3. Apply schema migration v94 (take_domain_assignments table):

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The dry-run pass

Always start with --dry-run to see what the importer would do without writing anything:
The output reports:
  • emitted — atoms/concepts/ideas that would import cleanly
  • skipped_no_type — files without a type: frontmatter (counted as benign skips; no audit appended)
  • skipped_invalid — files that failed validation (these append to ~/.modusbrain/audit/markdown-greenfield-failures-YYYY-Www.jsonl)
Inspect the audit JSONL:
Common failures:
  • Empty frontmatter — file has --- but no fields. Not a real brain page; safe to leave skipped.
  • Malformed YAML — fix the file in your OpenClaw then re-run.
  • Missing required field — usually means the original OpenClaw skill output a partial page; check whether the file is worth preserving.

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The actual import

When the dry-run looks clean, drop the --dry-run and --limit flags:
Expect ~30-60 minutes for the full 24K-page set (atoms + concepts + ideas). The importer:
  1. Walks atoms/{YYYY-MM-DD}/*.md, concepts/*.md, ideas/*.md in deterministic alphabetical order so partial-run resumes pick up where they left off.
  2. Stamps imported_from: markdown-greenfield + imported_at: <ISO timestamp> on every page’s frontmatter, preserving ALL original fields verbatim under metadata.original_frontmatter.
  3. Emits each as an IngestionEvent with mode: 'migration' (T2), which bypasses the daemon’s 24h DedupWindow. The importer owns its own permanent slug-keyed idempotency.
  4. Routes through put_page so pages land with proper FK chains and embedding eligibility.

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After the import

Verify counts match:
The next modusbrain dream cycle will:
  • Run extract_atoms on NEW transcripts (skips pages with the imported_from marker — your historical atoms are frozen, not re-extracted).
  • Run synthesize_concepts on NEW atoms (skips imported concepts for the same reason).
  • Run extract_facts over the imported pages — facts fences in imported atoms/concepts populate the facts table normally.

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Retiring your OpenClaw’s parallel crons

After verifying the import, retire your OpenClaw’s parallel atom pipeline cron entries. In ~/git/your-openclaw/workspace/cron.json:
  • Remove atom-pipeline-coordinator (every-30-min cron)
  • Remove atom-backfill-coordinator (every-10-min cron)
Replace with nothing — modusbrain’s autopilot already runs extract_atoms + synthesize_concepts inside every dream cycle when modusbrain-creator (or modusbrain-everything) is the active pack. The OpenClaw skills themselves shrink to thin wrappers:
  • content-atom-extractor → calls modusbrain dream --phase extract_atoms
  • concept-synthesis → calls modusbrain dream --phase synthesize_concepts
  • atom-backfill-coordinator → DELETED (backfill is now part of extract_atoms via the Source Quote + lesson enrichment in one Haiku call per transcript)

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Rolling back

The import is fully reversible:
Your OpenClaw’s ~/git/brain/atoms/ + concepts/ + ideas/ directories are untouched by the importer — they remain the source of truth for rollback. The greenfield importer only READS from them.

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Re-running after partial failures

The importer is idempotent at the page-slug level: re-running on the same --repo produces zero net-new pages (every page either lands fresh or matches an existing slug). If you fix some validation failures in your OpenClaw and want to retry just those:
Already-imported pages stay; previously-failed pages get a fresh attempt; the audit JSONL accumulates per-week (ISO week file rotation).