edit_note append should create file if it doesn't exist

[bm-clawd]

Feature: edit_note append/prepend should create file if not found

Current Behavior

edit_note(operation=append) on a nonexistent note returns an error (Entity not found). The MCP result doesn't set isError: true — it returns a malformed success response missing structuredContent, causing downstream clients to throw invalid edit_note payload.

Desired Behavior

edit_note should just work:

Operation	Note Exists	Behavior	fileCreated
append	yes	Append content to end	false
append	no	Create file with content	true
prepend	yes	Prepend content to start	false
prepend	no	Create file with content	true
find_replace	no	Error (can't replace in nonexistent file)	n/a
replace_section	no	Error (can't replace section that doesn't exist)	n/a

Response Shape (always)

{
  "title": "conversations-2026-02-26",
  "permalink": "claw/conversations/conversations-2026-02-26",
  "file_path": "memory/conversations/conversations-2026-02-26.md",
  "fileCreated": true
}

No isError for the create-on-miss case. The caller asked to append — the tool appends. Whether the file was just created is metadata, not an error.

Motivation

The openclaw-basic-memory plugin's conversation auto-capture calls edit_note(append) to build up daily conversation notes. On the first message of the day, the note doesn't exist. Currently this silently fails every time (100+ failures/day logged in BM), and the fallback logic in the plugin was broken because the error format was unexpected.

With this change, the plugin's indexConversation becomes one line:

await this.editNote(title, 'append', entry)

Also applies to MCP tool callers (Claude, Cursor, etc.)

Any AI using edit_note to incrementally build a note shouldn't need to check if the note exists first. append to a nonexistent file should just work — same as echo 'hello' >> newfile.txt in a shell.

[claude]

Claude encountered an error —— View job

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I'll analyze this and get back to you.

[phernandez]

Fixed in e59b5cb. edit_note append/prepend now auto-create the note if it doesn't exist, eliminating silent failures for plugins that build daily notes.