Multi-agent routing

Run multiple isolated agents in one Gateway process, each with its own workspace, state directory (agentDir), and SQLite-backed session history, plus multiple channel accounts (e.g. two WhatsApp numbers). Inbound messages route to the right agent through bindings.

An agent is the full per-persona scope: workspace files, auth profiles, model registry, and session store. A binding maps a channel account (a Slack workspace, a WhatsApp number, etc.) to one of those agents.

For a focused setup guide with account and conversation examples, see Agent bindings.

What is one agent

Each agent has its own:

• Workspace: files, AGENTS.md/SOUL.md/USER.md, local notes, persona rules.
• State directory (agentDir): auth profiles, model registry, per-agent config.
• Session store: chat history and routing state in <agentDir>/openclaw-agent.sqlite.

Auth profiles are per-agent, read from <agentDir>/openclaw-agent.sqlite. With the default layout, that resolves to:

~/.openclaw/agents/<agentId>/agent/openclaw-agent.sqlite

Skills load from each agent workspace plus shared roots such as ~/.openclaw/skills, then filter by the effective agent skill allowlist. Use agents.defaults.skills for a shared baseline and agents.entries.*.skills for a per-agent replacement (explicit entries replace the default, they do not merge). See Skills: per-agent vs shared and Skills: agent allowlists.

Plugin-owned storage follows that plugin's configuration; adding a second agent does not automatically split every global plugin store. For example, configure Memory Wiki per-agent vaults when personas must not share compiled wiki knowledge.

Paths

Single-agent mode (default)

If you configure nothing, OpenClaw runs one agent:

• agentId defaults to main.
• The main session key is agent:main:main.
• Workspace defaults to <stateDir>/workspace (~/.openclaw/workspace for the default install and ~/.openclaw-<profile>/workspace for a named profile).
• State defaults to ~/.openclaw/agents/main/agent.

Agent helper

Add a new isolated agent:

openclaw agents add work

Flags: --role <role>, --workspace <dir>, --model <id>, --agent-dir <dir>, --bind <channel[:accountId]> (repeatable), --non-interactive (requires --workspace unless a role is supplied).

Add bindings to route inbound messages (the wizard offers to do this for you), then verify:

openclaw agents list --bindings

In the Control UI, Agents at /agents shows the roster, current work status, and recent chat previews, with Open chat opening each agent's main session. Use Manage agents to configure the roster at /settings/agents.

Settings → Agents updates model choices when the Gateway publishes a new catalog. Refreshing choices preserves your selected model, fallbacks, and identity draft. If the read fails, the editor shows an error and keeps the previous choices until a later update succeeds. Model and fallback edits keep their normal automatic save behavior.

Agent provenance

OpenClaw records how each configured agent was created: operator for CLI, onboarding, and Gateway requests; agent when the system agent requested it; and claw when a Claw install added it. Agent-created entries also retain the requesting agent id. A configured agent can ask OpenClaw to create another agent through its openclaw tool. The system agent files the typed operation, shows the requesting agent id to the operator, and creates the agent only after operator approval. Inspect the current creation hierarchy with:

openclaw agents list --tree

Deleted creators remain historical provenance. If the creator is no longer in the configured roster, its children appear at the root of the tree.

Team preset

Create a small team with written role contracts and directed delegation:

openclaw agents team create --non-interactiveopenclaw agent --agent coordinator --message "Research the options and draft a recommendation."

The preset creates a chief of staff (coordinator), researcher, writer, and reviewer, each with its own workspace and completed identity. The chief of staff remains the human's point of contact: it discovers matching specialists, assigns bounded work, checks their artifacts, and reports a coherent result. Specialists return artifacts and evidence to the coordinator without delegating further. Their operating programs live in AGENTS.md, so they also apply in spawned sessions that do not load SOUL.md or IDENTITY.md.

The bundled roles are Claw sources, sharing the portable CLAW.md format for identity, the SOUL.md body, and declared workspace files. agents add --role <role> loads one of these sources. With the experimental Claws surface enabled, the equivalent source path from a source checkout is openclaw claws add docs/reference/templates/roles/<role>; follow the Claw preview and consent flow.

You can also create the chief of staff or the full team from the Control UI: choose New agent in the sidebar or Agents home, then select the role or small-team recommendation in the custodian chat. Creation uses the same role templates and waits for your approval.

The relevant per-agent delegation fragment is:

{  agents: {    entries: {      coordinator: {        subagents: {          allowAgents: ["researcher", "writer", "reviewer"],          delegationMode: "prefer",        },      },      researcher: { subagents: { allowAgents: [] } },      writer: { subagents: { allowAgents: [] } },      reviewer: { subagents: { allowAgents: [] } },    },  },}

"prefer" guides the coordinator to delegate suitable work; it is prompt guidance, not a scheduler. allowAgents controls explicit spawn targets. The preset keeps agents.defaults.subagents and tools.* unchanged, so existing tool availability and access policy still apply. Role instructions require human approval before external sends, publication, purchases, deletion, or production changes. These delegation settings remain team wiring in config. The role Claws will carry them once the separate Claw profile support lands.

The coordinator is an explicit target. Team creation sets agents.defaults.systemAgent.agentId to the coordinator only when that owner is unset; an existing owner is preserved and reported. In an explicit fleet, this also designates the default for operations that support default-agent selection. Explicit targets and routing bindings take precedence.

Use --prefix <p> to namespace all team ids, --coordinator <id> to rename the coordinator, and --workspace-root <dir> to choose the parent directory for the separate workspaces. All ids are checked for conflicts before creation. See agents team create for flags and examples, or use the team choice during onboarding.

Quick start

openclaw agents add codingopenclaw agents add social

openclaw channels login --channel whatsapp --account work

openclaw gateway restartopenclaw agents list --bindingsopenclaw channels status --probe

Multiple agents, multiple personas

Each configured agentId is a distinct persona boundary for core agent state:

• Different accounts per channel (per accountId).
• Different personalities (per-agent AGENTS.md/SOUL.md).
• Separate auth and sessions, with cross-agent session access on by default and governed by tools.agentToAgent. Narrow session visibility with tools.sessions.visibility, restrict agent pairs with tools.agentToAgent.allow, or set tools.agentToAgent.enabled: false to block ordinary cross-agent access. Requester-owned native subagent and ACP child sessions stay reachable under tree or all visibility; use separate gateways for strict separation.

This lets multiple people share one Gateway while keeping core agent state separate.

Per-agent Memory Wiki vaults

Memory Wiki uses one global vault by default. To keep a support agent's compiled knowledge separate from a marketing agent's, set plugins.entries.memory-wiki.config.vault.scope to agent:

{  plugins: {    entries: {      "memory-wiki": {        enabled: true,        config: {          vault: {            scope: "agent",            path: "~/.openclaw/wiki",          },        },      },    },  },}

The configured path is the parent directory. OpenClaw appends the normalized agent id, producing paths such as ~/.openclaw/wiki/support and ~/.openclaw/wiki/marketing. Agent-scoped CLI and Gateway operations require an explicit agent when multiple agents are configured. See Memory Wiki per-agent vaults for bridge filtering, migration, and trust-boundary details.

Cross-agent memory search

The QMD cross-agent search path was removed in v2026.8.1 along with the rest of the QMD backend. Builtin memory does not search another agent's transcript corpus; each agent searches only its own configured memory and eligible same-agent session sources. Put intentionally shared Markdown in an explicit shared memory.search.extraPaths directory when the same reference material should be indexed by multiple agents. For the full upgrade path, see Migrating from QMD.

One WhatsApp number, multiple people (DM split)

Route different WhatsApp DMs to different agents on one WhatsApp account by matching sender E.164 (+15551234567) with peer.kind: "direct". Replies still come from the same WhatsApp number — there is no per-agent sender identity.

{  agents: {    entries: {      alex: { default: true, workspace: "~/.openclaw/workspace-alex" },      mia: { workspace: "~/.openclaw/workspace-mia" },    },  },  bindings: [    {      agentId: "alex",      match: { channel: "whatsapp", peer: { kind: "direct", id: "+15551230001" } },    },    {      agentId: "mia",      match: { channel: "whatsapp", peer: { kind: "direct", id: "+15551230002" } },    },  ],  channels: {    whatsapp: {      dmPolicy: "allowlist",      allowFrom: ["+15551230001", "+15551230002"],    },  },}

DM access control (pairing/allowlist) is global per WhatsApp account, not per agent. For shared groups, bind the group to one agent or use Broadcast groups.

Routing rules

Bindings are deterministic and most-specific wins. See Channel routing for the full tier order (exact peer, parent peer, peer wildcard, guild+roles, guild, team, account, channel, default agent). A few rules worth calling out here:

• If multiple bindings match within the same tier, the first one in config order wins.
• If a binding sets multiple match fields (for example peer + guildId), all specified fields must match (AND semantics).
• A binding that omits accountId matches only the default account, not every account. Use accountId: "*" for a channel-wide fallback, or accountId: "<name>" for one account. Adding the same binding again with an explicit account id upgrades the existing channel-only binding instead of duplicating it.

For existing multi-agent configs, openclaw doctor --fix materializes legacy ambient default routing into channel-wide bindings plus explicit heartbeat, Custodian, and Talk targets. Single-agent configs are unchanged.

For a multi-agent roster defined directly in the main config file without a legacy default: true marker, Doctor adds agents.ownership: "explicit" for both keyed agents.entries and older agents.list rosters, including with --fix --non-interactive. Existing bindings and per-surface owners remain unchanged. Last-known-good recovery applies the same ownership stamp before validating and restoring a directly authored markerless roster. If an account has no fallback route but its matchable narrower bindings all explicitly name one configured agent, Doctor adds an account-scoped binding for that agent. It does not borrow ownership from another account or channel, choose between conflicting owners, or assign other unowned surfaces.

When migrating a legacy agents.list roster without a default marker, Doctor also pins the first agent's inherited workspace to agents.entries.<id>.workspace. Its customized instructions and historical memory/ notes remain in their original directory. Explicit workspaces stay authoritative. If an earlier upgrade already left two edited workspaces, select the intended per-agent workspace and reconcile their contents from your backups; Doctor does not merge directories.

Multiple accounts / phone numbers

Channels that support multiple accounts (e.g. WhatsApp) use accountId to identify each login. Each accountId routes to its own agent, so one server can host multiple phone numbers without mixing sessions.

Set channels.<channel>.defaultAccount to choose the account used when accountId is omitted. When unset, OpenClaw falls back to default if present, otherwise the first configured account id (sorted).

Channels supporting multiple accounts: discord, feishu, googlechat, imessage, irc, line, mattermost, matrix, nextcloud-talk, nostr, signal, slack, telegram, whatsapp, zalo, zalouser.

Concepts

• agentId: one "brain" (workspace, per-agent auth, per-agent session store).
• accountId: one channel account instance (e.g. WhatsApp account personal vs biz).
• binding: routes inbound messages to an agentId by (channel, accountId, peer), and optionally guild/team ids.
• Direct chats collapse to agent:<agentId>:main by default (the per-agent main session).

Platform examples

{  agents: {    entries: {      main: { default: true, workspace: "~/.openclaw/workspace-main" },      coding: { workspace: "~/.openclaw/workspace-coding" },    },  },  bindings: [    { agentId: "main", match: { channel: "discord", accountId: "default" } },    { agentId: "coding", match: { channel: "discord", accountId: "coding" } },  ],  channels: {    discord: {      groupPolicy: "allowlist",      accounts: {        default: {          token: "DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN_MAIN",          guilds: {            "123456789012345678": {              channels: {                "222222222222222222": { enabled: true, requireMention: false },              },            },          },        },        coding: {          token: "DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN_CODING",          guilds: {            "123456789012345678": {              channels: {                "333333333333333333": { enabled: true, requireMention: false },              },            },          },        },      },    },  },}

{  agents: {    entries: {      main: { default: true, workspace: "~/.openclaw/workspace-main" },      alerts: { workspace: "~/.openclaw/workspace-alerts" },    },  },  bindings: [    { agentId: "main", match: { channel: "telegram", accountId: "default" } },    { agentId: "alerts", match: { channel: "telegram", accountId: "alerts" } },  ],  channels: {    telegram: {      accounts: {        default: {          botToken: "123456:ABC...",          dmPolicy: "pairing",        },        alerts: {          botToken: "987654:XYZ...",          dmPolicy: "allowlist",          allowFrom: ["tg:123456789"],        },      },    },  },}

openclaw channels login --channel whatsapp --account personalopenclaw channels login --channel whatsapp --account biz

{  agents: {    entries: {      home: {        default: true,        name: "Home",        workspace: "~/.openclaw/workspace-home",        agentDir: "~/.openclaw/agents/home/agent",      },      work: {        name: "Work",        workspace: "~/.openclaw/workspace-work",        agentDir: "~/.openclaw/agents/work/agent",      },    },  },   // Deterministic routing: first match wins (most-specific first).  bindings: [    { agentId: "home", match: { channel: "whatsapp", accountId: "personal" } },    { agentId: "work", match: { channel: "whatsapp", accountId: "biz" } },     // Optional per-peer override (example: send a specific group to work agent).    {      agentId: "work",      match: {        channel: "whatsapp",        accountId: "personal",        peer: { kind: "group", id: "1203630...@g.us" },      },    },  ],   // On by default. Omitted/empty `allow` permits every agent pair;  // list requester and target ids to restrict access, or set enabled: false to turn it off.  tools: {    agentToAgent: {      allow: ["home", "work"],    },  },   channels: {    whatsapp: {      accounts: {        personal: {          // Optional override. Default: ~/.openclaw/credentials/whatsapp/personal          // authDir: "~/.openclaw/credentials/whatsapp/personal",        },        biz: {          // Optional override. Default: ~/.openclaw/credentials/whatsapp/biz          // authDir: "~/.openclaw/credentials/whatsapp/biz",        },      },    },  },}

Common patterns

{  agents: {    entries: {      chat: {        default: true,        name: "Everyday",        workspace: "~/.openclaw/workspace-chat",        model: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6",      },      opus: {        name: "Deep Work",        workspace: "~/.openclaw/workspace-opus",        model: "anthropic/claude-opus-4-6",      },    },  },  bindings: [    { agentId: "chat", match: { channel: "whatsapp", accountId: "*" } },    { agentId: "opus", match: { channel: "telegram", accountId: "*" } },  ],}

{  agents: {    entries: {      chat: {        default: true,        name: "Everyday",        workspace: "~/.openclaw/workspace-chat",        model: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6",      },      opus: {        name: "Deep Work",        workspace: "~/.openclaw/workspace-opus",        model: "anthropic/claude-opus-4-6",      },    },  },  bindings: [    {      agentId: "opus",      match: { channel: "whatsapp", accountId: "*", peer: { kind: "direct", id: "+15551234567" } },    },    { agentId: "chat", match: { channel: "whatsapp", accountId: "*" } },  ],}

{  agents: {    entries: {      family: {        default: true,        name: "Family",        workspace: "~/.openclaw/workspace-family",        identity: { name: "Family Bot" },        groupChat: {          mentionPatterns: ["@family", "@familybot", "@Family Bot"],        },        sandbox: {          mode: "all",          scope: "agent",        },        tools: {          allow: [            "exec",            "read",            "sessions_list",            "sessions_history",            "sessions_send",            "sessions_spawn",            "session_status",          ],          deny: ["write", "edit", "apply_patch", "browser", "canvas", "nodes", "cron"],        },      },    },  },  bindings: [    {      agentId: "family",      match: {        channel: "whatsapp",        peer: { kind: "group", id: "120363999999999999@g.us" },      },    },  ],}

Per-agent sandbox and tool configuration

Each agent can have its own sandbox and tool restrictions:

{  agents: {    entries: {      personal: {        default: true,        workspace: "~/.openclaw/workspace-personal",        sandbox: {          mode: "off", // No sandbox for personal agent        },        // No tool restrictions - all tools available      },      family: {        workspace: "~/.openclaw/workspace-family",        sandbox: {          mode: "all", // Always sandboxed          scope: "agent", // One container per agent          docker: {            // Optional one-time setup after container creation            setupCommand: "apt-get update && apt-get install -y git curl",          },        },        tools: {          allow: ["read"], // Only read tool          deny: ["exec", "write", "edit", "apply_patch"], // Deny others        },      },    },  },}

This gives you:

• Security isolation: restrict tools for untrusted agents.
• Resource control: sandbox specific agents while keeping others on host.
• Flexible policies: different permissions per agent.

See Multi-agent sandbox and tools for detailed examples.

Related

• ACP agents — running external coding harnesses
• Channel routing — how messages route to agents
• Parallel specialist lanes — splitting one job across role-scoped agents
• Presence — agent presence and availability
• Session — session isolation and routing
• Sub-agents — spawning background agent runs
• openclaw agents — create and inspect agents from the CLI