Memory/QMD: robustly parse noisy qmd JSON output

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -69,6 +69,7 @@ Docs: https://docs.openclaw.ai
 - TUI: refactor searchable select list description layout and add regression coverage for ANSI-highlight width bounds.
 - Memory/QMD: cap QMD command output buffering to prevent memory exhaustion from pathological `qmd` command output.
 - Memory/QMD: query QMD index using exact docid matches before falling back to prefix lookup for better recall correctness and index efficiency.
+- Memory/QMD: make QMD result JSON parsing resilient to noisy command output by extracting the first JSON array from noisy `stdout`.
 - Models/CLI: guard `models status` string trimming paths to prevent crashes from malformed non-string config values. (#16395) Thanks @BinHPdev.
 
 ## 2026.2.14

src/memory/qmd-query-parser.test.ts

@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
+import { describe, expect, it } from "vitest";
+import { parseQmdQueryJson } from "./qmd-query-parser.js";
+
+describe("parseQmdQueryJson", () => {
+  it("parses clean qmd JSON output", () => {
+    const results = parseQmdQueryJson('[{"docid":"abc","score":1,"snippet":"@@ -1,1\\none"}]', "");
+    expect(results).toEqual([
+      {
+        docid: "abc",
+        score: 1,
+        snippet: "@@ -1,1\none",
+      },
+    ]);
+  });
+
+  it("extracts embedded result arrays from noisy stdout", () => {
+    const results = parseQmdQueryJson(
+      `initializing
+{"payload":"ok"}
+[{"docid":"abc","score":0.5}]
+complete`,
+      "",
+    );
+    expect(results).toEqual([{ docid: "abc", score: 0.5 }]);
+  });
+
+  it("treats plain-text no-results from stderr as an empty result set", () => {
+    const results = parseQmdQueryJson("", "No results found\n");
+    expect(results).toEqual([]);
+  });
+
+  it("throws when stdout cannot be interpreted as qmd JSON", () => {
+    expect(() => parseQmdQueryJson("this is not json", "")).toThrow(
+      /qmd query returned invalid JSON/i,
+    );
+  });
+});

src/memory/qmd-query-parser.ts

@@ -25,11 +25,19 @@ export function parseQmdQueryJson(stdout: string, stderr: string): QmdQueryResul
     throw new Error(`qmd query returned invalid JSON: ${message}`);
   }
   try {
-    const parsed = JSON.parse(trimmedStdout) as unknown;
+    const parsed = parseQmdQueryResultArray(trimmedStdout);
-    if (!Array.isArray(parsed)) {
+    if (parsed !== null) {
+      return parsed;
+    }
+    const noisyPayload = extractFirstJsonArray(trimmedStdout);
+    if (!noisyPayload) {
       throw new Error("qmd query JSON response was not an array");
     }
-    return parsed as QmdQueryResult[];
+    const fallback = parseQmdQueryResultArray(noisyPayload);
+    if (fallback !== null) {
+      return fallback;
+    }
+    throw new Error("qmd query JSON response was not an array");
   } catch (err) {
     const message = err instanceof Error ? err.message : String(err);
     log.warn(`qmd query returned invalid JSON: ${message}`);
@@ -45,3 +53,56 @@ function isQmdNoResultsOutput(raw: string): boolean {
 function summarizeQmdStderr(raw: string): string {
   return raw.length <= 120 ? raw : `${raw.slice(0, 117)}...`;
 }
+
+function parseQmdQueryResultArray(raw: string): QmdQueryResult[] | null {
+  try {
+    const parsed = JSON.parse(raw) as unknown;
+    if (!Array.isArray(parsed)) {
+      return null;
+    }
+    return parsed as QmdQueryResult[];
+  } catch {
+    return null;
+  }
+}
+
+function extractFirstJsonArray(raw: string): string | null {
+  const start = raw.indexOf("[");
+  if (start < 0) {
+    return null;
+  }
+  let depth = 0;
+  let inString = false;
+  let escaped = false;
+  for (let i = start; i < raw.length; i += 1) {
+    const char = raw[i];
+    if (char === undefined) {
+      break;
+    }
+    if (inString) {
+      if (escaped) {
+        escaped = false;
+        continue;
+      }
+      if (char === "\\") {
+        escaped = true;
+      } else if (char === '"') {
+        inString = false;
+      }
+      continue;
+    }
+    if (char === '"') {
+      inString = true;
+      continue;
+    }
+    if (char === "[") {
+      depth += 1;
+    } else if (char === "]") {
+      depth -= 1;
+      if (depth === 0) {
+        return raw.slice(start, i + 1);
+      }
+    }
+  }
+  return null;
+}