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Technical reference

Agent runtime architecture

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OpenClaw owns the built-in agent runtime directly. The runtime code lives under src/agents/, model/provider helpers live under src/llm/, and plugin-facing contracts are exposed through openclaw/plugin-sdk/* barrels.

Runtime Layout

  • src/agents/embedded-agent-runner/: built-in agent attempt loop, provider stream adapters, compaction, model selection, and session wiring.
  • src/agents/sessions/: session persistence, extension loading, resource discovery, skills, prompts, themes, and TUI-backed tool renderers.
  • packages/agent-core/: reusable agent core, lower-level harness types, messages, compaction helpers, prompt templates, and tool/session contracts.
  • src/agents/runtime/: OpenClaw facade for @openclaw/agent-core plus local proxy utilities.
  • src/agents/agent-tools*.ts: OpenClaw-owned tool definitions, schemas, policy, before/after hook adapters, and host edit support.
  • src/agents/agent-hooks/: built-in runtime hooks such as compaction safeguards and context pruning.
  • src/llm/: model/provider registry, transport helpers, and provider-specific stream implementations.

Boundaries

Core code calls the built-in runtime through OpenClaw modules and SDK barrels, not through old external agent packages. Plugins use documented openclaw/plugin-sdk/* entrypoints and do not import src/** internals.

@earendil-works/pi-tui remains a third-party TUI dependency. It is used as a terminal component toolkit by the local TUI and session renderers; internalizing it would be a separate vendoring effort.

Manifests

Resource packages declare OpenClaw resources in package metadata:

json
{  "openclaw": {    "extensions": ["extensions/index.ts"],    "skills": ["skills/*.md"],    "prompts": ["prompts/*.md"],    "themes": ["themes/*.json"]  }}

The package manager also discovers conventional extensions/, skills/, prompts/, and themes/ directories.

Runtime Selection

The default built-in runtime id is openclaw. Plugin harnesses can register additional runtime ids. auto selects a supporting plugin harness when one exists and otherwise uses the built-in OpenClaw runtime.

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