Persist chat unread counts from sync events

[drelum]

Context

wacli already stores chat state locally and exposes chats list --unread, but the local chats.unread value currently behaves like a boolean. That makes downstream read-only integrations unable to reproduce the WhatsApp unread badge/count from wacli.db.

I hit this while building against the local SQLite store: I needed to list unread conversations and know how many unread messages each chat had, without mutating WhatsApp state.

Problem

Unread state can be incomplete or too lossy today:

• history sync conversations can include an unread count, but it is not persisted as a count in the chat row;
• live incoming messages should increment local unread state for that chat;
• chats list --json / chats show --json expose only unread: true|false, so integrations cannot read the actual badge count;
• --unread is more useful if it means unread_count > 0, not only an exact boolean value.

Proposed behavior

Treat chats.unread as the local unread-message count while preserving the existing boolean convenience field in CLI JSON:

• add unread_count to chat JSON output;
• keep unread as unread_count > 0 for backward compatibility;
• persist Conversation.unread_count during history sync;
• if WhatsApp marks a conversation as unread but count is absent/zero, store count 1;
• increment unread count for live inbound messages, excluding own messages and status broadcasts;
• keep mark-read setting count to 0 and mark-unread setting count to at least 1;
• make chats list --unread filter unread > 0 and --no-unread filter unread = 0;
• when PN/LID duplicate chat rows are merged for display, merge the unread counts too.

Patch reference

I have a working patch in my fork here:

drelum@2fd404e

The patch includes focused tests around:

• live sync incrementing unread count;
• history sync storing Conversation.unread_count;
• store filtering/count behavior;
• chat display flag formatting (unread:3);
• PN/LID display merge preserving unread totals.

Why this helps

This makes wacli.db more useful for local agents, dashboards, and read-only integrations that need to prioritize unread conversations without connecting to WhatsApp or changing read state.

[dovocoder]

I opened PR #255 for this, based on the behavior from drelum/wacli@2fd404e and adapted onto current openclaw/wacli main.

Updated summary after the cleaned branch:

• unread remains the boolean chat unread marker/state in JSON and in the local chats.unread column.
• unread_count exposes only the numeric unread-message badge count, stored separately in chats.unread_count.
• mark-unread is marker-only: it marks the chat as unread but does not invent or increment an unread message count, so unread: true with unread_count: 0 is possible.
• History sync preserves the same distinction: Conversation.unreadCount stores a positive count, while marker-only MarkedAsUnread marks the chat unread with count 0.
• Live inbound messages increment the local unread-message count and set the unread marker, but duplicate live deliveries no longer increment unread_count more than once.
• Chat flags show counted unread state as unread:N, including unread:1; marker-only unread remains unread.
• mark-read resets the unread marker and count.
• PN/LID display merges summed unread counts.
• --unread and --no-unread remain unread-state filters for both counted and marker-only unread state.
• The stale sqlc-generated SetChatUnread query/wrapper was removed because SetChatUnread now needs custom marker/count behavior.

Verification on the pushed branch:

• pnpm format:check
• pnpm lint
• pnpm test
• pnpm build
• git diff --check

Pushed branch head: 13f83de2bab268f58922ef308c00ce670c8775fd.

[clawsweeper]

ClawSweeper status: review started.

I am starting a fresh review of this issue: Persist chat unread counts from sync events This is item 1/1 in the current shard. Shard 0/1.

This placeholder means the worker is alive and reading the current context. I will edit this same comment with the actual review when the claws are done clicking.

Crustacean status: shell secured, claws on keyboard, evidence pebbles being sorted.