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Safety System Skill

System safety and control-plane skill that prevents agent deadlocks and freezes. Provides non-LLM control commands to inspect task state, flush message queues, cancel long-running work, and recover safely without restarting the container.

personAuthor: jakexiaohubgithub
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error-guard

⚠️ System‑level skill (Advanced users)

This skill defines the control‑plane safety primitives for OpenClaw. It is intentionally minimal, non‑blocking, and designed to prevent agent freezes, deadlocks, and unrecoverable states when running long‑lived or high‑risk workloads.

Design Principles

Warning: This skill operates at the agent control‑plane level. It should be installed only by users who understand OpenClaw’s execution model and are running workloads that can block, hang, or run for extended periods.

  • Main agent never blocks: no long exec, no external I/O, no LLM calls.
  • Event-driven: workers emit events; the control plane listens.
  • Fail-safe first: recovery commands must always respond.
  • Minimal state: track only task metadata (never payloads).

Command Surface (Phase 1)

/status

Report current system health and task registry state.

Returns:

  • Active tasks (taskId, type, state)
  • Start time and last heartbeat
  • Flags for stalled or overdue tasks

Constraints:

  • Must run in constant time
  • Must not call any model or external API

/flush

Emergency stop.

Immediately:

  • Cancel all active tasks
  • Kill active exec/process sessions
  • Clear pending message queue
  • Reset in-memory task registry

Constraints:

  • Must always respond
  • No waiting on workers
  • No model calls

/recover

Safe recovery sequence.

Steps:

  1. Execute /flush
  2. Reset control-plane state
  3. Optionally reload skills/state (no container restart)

Future Extensions (Not Implemented Yet)

  • Sub-agent runner helper (event-driven)
  • Task watchdogs with TTL and silence detection
  • Structured event protocol (task.started, task.heartbeat, task.completed, ...)
  • Back-pressure and task classes (interactive / batch / background)

Security & Privacy

  • This skill does not store payloads, prompts, messages, or model outputs
  • Only minimal task metadata is persisted (taskId, timestamps, state)
  • No API keys, credentials, or user data are read or written
  • Safe to publish and share publicly

Non-Goals

  • No business logic
  • No background polling loops
  • No user-facing features
  • No LLM reasoning paths

This skill is the last line of defense. Keep it small, fast, and reliable.

Instruction

  • Utilize non-LLM control commands to inspect the agent's internal task registry and system health without blocking execution.
  • Run /status periodically to identify stalled or overdue tasks and report the current heartbeat of the control plane.
  • Execute the /flush command as an emergency stop to immediately cancel all active tasks and clear pending message queues.
  • Perform the /recover sequence to reset the agent's state and reload necessary skills after a system freeze or deadlock.
  • Strictly adhere to constant-time constraints for safety commands, ensuring they never call external APIs or LLM models.
  • Monitor minimal task metadata (ID, timestamps) to maintain a fail-safe environment for long-lived or high-risk workloads.

When to Use

  • When running high-risk, long-duration tasks that are prone to agent freezes or infinite loops.
  • When requiring an emergency "kill switch" to stop active code execution or message processing.
  • When performing automated system health monitoring for complex multi-agent orchestration.

Output

  • Real-time system health reports including task IDs and start times.
  • Detailed recovery logs summarizing the outcome of flush and reset operations.
  • Actionable status flags for stalled processes and suggested recovery paths.