OpenClaw Interaction Bridge 🟥

Agent state on a screen. Approvals on a button. Notifications that learn. No keyboard required.

A plugin that bridges OpenClaw agent activity to any external program! Snarling for example — a Raspberry Pi + DisplayHAT Mini companion that shows what the agent is doing and lets you approve or reject actions with physical A/B buttons and lets agents send notifications with a feedback loop for attunement!

What It Does

State Display

The plugin hooks into OpenClaw events and POSTs state updates to Snarling's display server:

| Agent Activity | Snarling Shows | Trigger | |---|---|---| | Using tools | processing | before_tool_call | | Generating response | communicating | before_agent_reply | | 30s idle | sleeping | Auto-timeout |

Duplicates are suppressed — only state changes are sent. After 30 seconds of no activity, the display automatically goes to sleep.

Physical Approvals — request_user_approval

The plugin registers a request_user_approval tool that routes yes/no decisions to Snarling's physical A/B buttons. Use this tool whenever you need a human decision before proceeding with an action.

Parameters

| Parameter | Type | Required | Description | |---|---|---|---| | action | string | Yes | Short verb phrase, max 24 chars (e.g., delete_file, send_email, publish_skill). Shown on the display header line. | | message | string | Yes | Brief explanation, max 60 chars ideal, 80 chars hard limit. Shown as 2 lines of ~29 chars each on the physical display. Keep it concise — long text gets truncated. (e.g., Delete /tmp/old-logs? Cannot undo.) |

When to Use

• Before destructive actions: deleting files, dropping databases, overwriting configs
• Before external actions: sending emails, posting to social, making API calls that change state
• Before irreversible operations: publishing packages, deploying to production, transferring funds
• When uncertain: if you're not sure the user would want you to proceed, ask first

When NOT to Use

• Reading files, checking status, browsing — these are safe internal actions
• When the answer is obvious and the user explicitly asked you to do it
• In group chats or shared channels (the approval goes to a single physical device)

How It Works

1. You call request_user_approval({ action, message })
2. Plugin creates a TaskFlow and sets it to waiting
3. Snarling displays the request on screen with an A/B button prompt
4. Human presses A (approve) or B (reject)
5. Snarling forwards the decision to the plugin's /approval-callback route
6. Plugin resumes the TaskFlow and returns the result

The tool blocks until a response comes back. Only one approval at a time — if another is in progress, the call returns an error message instead of blocking.

Return Values

• ✅ APPROVED — proceed with the action
• ❌ REJECTED — do not proceed; respect the user's decision
• ⏰ Timed out — no response within 30 minutes; treat as rejected
• ⚠️ Approval request blocked — another approval is already waiting; finish that one first

Example

request_user_approval({
  action: "delete_file",
  message: "Delete old-config.yaml? 90d old, cannot undo."
})

Bad example (too long, gets truncated on display):

request_user_approval({
  action: "delete_important_configuration_file",  // too long for header
  message: "Delete /home/pi/old-config.yaml? This file has not been modified in 90 days and contains important settings."  // way too long
})

Notifications — send_notification

The plugin registers a send_notification tool that sends informational alerts to the Snarling display. Unlike approvals, notifications don't require a decision — they're for things the agent wants you to know about.

Parameters

| Parameter | Type | Required | Description | |---|---|---|---| | message | string | Yes | The notification text, max 60 chars ideal. Shown across 2-3 rotating banners on the display. | | priority | string | No | high, normal (default), or low. Controls LED color, status boxes, and timeout behavior. | | duration | number | No | Display duration in seconds. Default 0 = use priority-based timeout (high/normal: no timeout; low: 300s auto-dismiss). |

Priority Behavior

| Priority | LED Color | Status Boxes | Timeout | Behavior | |---|---|---|---|---| | high | Warm orange | 5/5 filled | None | Stays until you interact | | normal | Yellow | 3/5 filled | None | Stays until you interact | | low | Soft yellow | 1/5 filled | 300s | Auto-dismisses, sends timed_out feedback |

How It Works

1. Agent calls send_notification({ message, priority })
2. Plugin POSTs to Snarling's /approval/alert endpoint with type: "notification"
3. Snarling shows a subtle visual alert — the creature's face changes, LED pulses, status boxes fill
4. No text is shown until you press A — the notification stays as a subtle presence
5. Press A to reveal the notification text, B to dismiss without reading
6. Snarling sends feedback back to the agent: revealed, dismissed, or timed_out with time_to_reveal_sec

Notification Feedback Loop

Every notification gets a feedback callback:

{
  "notification_id": "notify-1234567890-abc",
  "revealed": true,
  "time_to_reveal_sec": 42.5,
  "dismissed": false,
  "timed_out": false,
  "present": true
}

time_to_reveal_sec measures total time from when the notification was sent to when you interacted — including any queue time behind other notifications. This enables notification attunement: the agent learns what kinds of messages you respond to and when.

Feedback is sent once per notification — on reveal (A press), dismiss (B press), or timeout. Post-reveal dismiss does not send a second callback.

Setup

Prerequisites

• Raspberry Pi with DisplayHAT Mini
• Snarling running (display server on port 5000)
• OpenClaw gateway >= 2026.3.24-beta.2

Install

# Clone to your OpenClaw extensions directory
git clone https://github.com/snarflakes/openclaw-interaction-bridge.git \
  ~/.openclaw/extensions/openclaw-interaction-bridge

# Install dependencies
cd ~/.openclaw/extensions/openclaw-interaction-bridge
npm install

# Restart OpenClaw
openclaw gateway restart

Custom Targets

To point at something other than the default Snarling ports (e.g., a Tauri app, mobile web view), edit the constants at the top of index.ts:

const SNARLING_URL = "http://localhost:5000/state";              // → your state endpoint
const CALLBACK_BASE_URL = "http://localhost:18789";              // → your callback base URL

For the approval secret (used to authenticate callback requests), set the OPENCLAW_APPROVAL_SECRET environment variable. If not set, a random secret is generated on each startup. When using a custom target, ensure the secret is included in the request body for callbacks.

No config file needed yet — when there are multiple adapters, a config-driven system will make sense. For now, editing the source is simpler and more honest.

Architecture

┌─────────────┐     HTTP POST      ┌──────────────┐   button press    ┌──────────────┐
│  OpenClaw    │ ────────────────── │  Snarling     │ ───────────────► │  OpenClaw    │
│  (plugin)    │   /state (5000)   │  Display      │  webhook + WS    │  Gateway     │
│              │ ────────────────── │  + Buttons    │  wake           │              │
│              │   /approval/alert  │               │                  │              │
│              │ ────────────────── │               │ ───────────────► │              │
│              │   /approval/alert  │               │  /approval-cb    │              │
│              │   (type: notify)   │               │ ───────────────► │              │
│              │                    │               │  /notification-cb│              │
└─────────────┘                    └──────────────┘                  └──────────────┘

• State updates: Plugin → Snarling /state (agent activity)
• Approvals: Plugin → Snarling /approval/alert → Human presses A/B → Snarling → Gateway /approval-callback
• Notifications: Plugin → Snarling /approval/alert (type: notify) → Human interacts → Snarling → Gateway /notification-callback
• Wake: Snarling sends WebSocket RPC wake to bypass gateway requests-in-flight check

Troubleshooting

• Display not updating: Check that Snarling's state server is running on port 5000 (curl -s http://localhost:5000/health)
• Approvals not working: Verify Snarling is running and the callback route is accessible on port 18789
• Notifications not showing: Check that the plugin can reach Snarling on port 5000
• Notification feedback not received: Verify the gateway callback route on port 18789 is accessible; check gateway logs for /notification-callback hits
• Stuck approval lock: Wait 30 minutes for the stale timeout, or restart the gateway
• Plugin not loading: Check openclaw gateway restart logs for errors; verify npm install completed; clear jiti cache with rm -f /tmp/jiti/openclaw-interaction-bridge-*.cjs

Install from ClawHub

openclaw plugins install clawhub:@snarflakes/openclaw-interaction-bridge