Gateway protocol session bootstrap and events

How a client bootstraps a session list in one call, the common gateway event families, and the node helper and exec lifecycle contracts.

Session list bootstrap

Call sessions.subscribe with a non-empty sessions.list parameter object, such as { limit: 60, ownerFirst: true }, to subscribe and load the initial roster in one request. A successful WebSocket response has the payload { subscribed: true, list }, where list is the normal SessionsListResult. Calling with {} preserves the acknowledgment-only response { subscribed: true } and does not read a snapshot. List parameters select the snapshot; they do not filter the connection's session event subscription.

List views can pass rowMode: "compact" to omit repeated detail-only metadata: contextWindows, contextWindowDefault, thinkingLevels, thinkingOptions, thinkingDefault, toolOverrides, providerReview, nativeRuntimeConsent, contextBudgetStatus, agentRuntime, and pluginExtensions. Each returned row carries rowMode: "compact"; those omissions mean the detail was not requested, and must not clear previously admitted detail fields. Use sessions.describe or the full chat.history.sessionInfo for details. Omitting rowMode preserves the full row contract. Title, preview, and Activity recap enrichment remain controlled by their existing include flags.

Control UI list requests use compact rows and a bounded diagnostic source: sidebar, dashboard, activity, sessions-page, chat-pane, agent-roster, command-palette, or skill-workshop. The source does not change selection or access. List and event rows include hasBoard, the prepared dashboard-membership fact, so a dashboard gallery can apply row updates without enumerating its pages again. Expanding a compact row on the Sessions page reads its full details with sessions.describe. Rows also carry childOwnerSessionKeys, the current retained owners used by the Gateway's spawnedBy filter. These receipts include runtime-controller and navigation ownership, expire through that same owner, and let child windows apply events without reimplementing retention rules in the browser.

The Gateway registers the subscription before projecting the list. Clients must listen for sessions.changed before making the request: events can arrive while the snapshot is being built. Reconcile those events with the response and issue a trailing sessions.list refresh when needed, including when an event only invalidates the cached list. Reconnects require a new subscription and snapshot.

The Gateway keeps durable session metadata in memory and finishes its initial row materialization before normal startup completes. Reconnecting clients can read the initial roster as soon as the Gateway is ready. Committed owner changes refresh affected rows incrementally; responses consume current row facts without a staleness window. Keyed descriptions, resolution, and chat startup prepare their requested row without waiting for the bulk refresh. Newly admitted or replaced stores load their metadata once, and rows disappear when their store leaves the current topology. Each response applies the current viewer's visibility and current activity time. Equivalent viewers share immutable row presentations and encoded row bytes until their projection facts change; snapshotAt retains the row's sampling time. Runtime authority, permission changes, and clock-expiring facts are checked before reuse. WebSocket views of the same identity, sharing policy, and query also share selection and facets within the current row publication. Queries that depend on live runs, a clock window, child retention, or search select again for each read. Every read presents current rows; unchanged rows share their array and assembled JSON bytes. In-process callers retain their own selection and row wrappers for authorized enrichment.

Resident rows use stored titles and usage. Optional message previews and terminal fallback-model metadata fill in through bounded read-only background transcript reads; they can be absent from an early response. Foreground requests take priority. These reads do not restore cold archives, parse oversized messages, call a model, or change stored metadata or session activity ordering. Missing historical titles and legacy ACP keys are repaired only by openclaw doctor --fix. Missing usage remains absent until the normal usage writer records it.

Both methods accept activeOnly: true to select currently running or queued sessions before pagination. Activity comes from the live runtime owners, not a stored status flag. Ordinary listing behavior is unchanged when the option is omitted or false. Active-only results include each visible agent-owned global and unknown session with its raw key and captured agentId; callers identify rows by agent, key, and sessionId together. Literal agent:<id>:global and agent:<id>:unknown sessions remain different rows. Active-only raw sentinel rows omit the optional childSessions and hasActiveSubagentRun fields; use hasActiveRun for direct activity. Normal permissions, archive/inclusion filters, and page limits still apply. Sessionless/internal runs are outside the session index.

Both methods accept ownerFirst: true to prepend up to 60 matching viewer-owned rows (or limit, when smaller) to the normal first page, deduplicated by session key. This applies only when offset is zero or omitted; later pages use normal pagination. Owned rows must pass the same visibility and list filters as the shared page. The Gateway resolves the viewer from the authenticated connection; no client-supplied identity selects these rows. Without an authenticated viewer identity, or when ownerFirst is false or omitted, the list uses normal ordering.

The shared page still determines limitApplied, offset, nextOffset, hasMore, and totalCount. Prepended rows can make sessions.length and count exceed the shared page size. Use nextOffset to advance and deduplicate rows by session key across pages; do not derive the next offset from the displayed row count.

Session message subscriptions and narration

sessions.messages.subscribe subscribes one connection to a session's live messages. Its key and optional agentId select the session; this is separate from the broad roster subscription above. Omit mode for full chat and agent streams, including foreground transcripts and passive views of runs started by another client. Repeating a request replaces that observer's subscription mode. sessions.messages.unsubscribe removes the observer identified by the same optional subscriptionId; omission selects the legacy observer. The subscribe acknowledgment includes the canonical key and resolved agentId. Clients retain the resolved owner for later global requests, whose key alone does not identify an agent. The SDK sends a stable opaque subscriptionId for each wire observer and includes it in resubscriptions and unsubscribe requests. For multiple IDs on one connection and session, full-stream interest takes precedence until its last owner releases; approvals remain enabled while any owner requests them. Omitting the ID retains the legacy single-observer behavior. Older clients remain compatible with the updated Gateway; the updated SDK's ownership fields require an updated Gateway.

Background narration consumers declare mode: "narration". The Gateway replaces their token-level chat deltas and raw agent assistant events with session.narration snapshots. Each snapshot contains sessionKey, optional agentId, runId, and text: at most 16,384 characters of the current visible assistant tail. Hidden reasoning and internal context are removed before the tail is bounded. An empty text retracts the previous narration. Consumers can derive a compact line from this text without reconstructing token deltas.

The first text update can arrive immediately. Subsequent snapshots arrive at most once every two seconds per session per connection, using the latest text without postponing the pending deadline. Terminal chat events flush the last snapshot immediately before the terminal event, including final text corrections or retractions; this final flush is exempt from the two-second interval. Newer tool activity or a change of run discards pending older text, so a delayed snapshot cannot replace a newer tool line or switch the sidebar back to an older run. Lifecycle, status, tool, final, abort, and error events retain their existing delivery. Raw thinking streams and in-progress preamble or answer-candidate text are omitted; item completion and answer selection still arrive. Approval events still require includeApprovals: true and the normal approval authority. Queued narration is discarded on unsubscribe, mode changes, connection retirement, or run retirement, and delivery rechecks current access.

The Gateway client SDK shares matching session addresses among local owners. The Gateway also combines independently identified observers that resolve to the same subscription key. If any owner requires full streams, delivery remains full; it returns to narration only after the last full owner releases it. Narration consumers sharing a foreground subscription must also accept full stream events. The Control UI waits for foreground admission before fetching history, so the snapshot covers activity emitted before full streams were enabled.

The bundled Control UI declares narration intent for sidebar interests. It is version-locked to its Gateway and reloads on upgrade. Shared Apple chat clients use the default full mode for foreground sessions; Android and the TUI retain their broad event delivery. Existing SDK callers and older clients that omit mode retain full streams. Custom UI roots, development UIs, and cross-origin UIs exempt from build admission can therefore retain full-stream narration until updated. This is an additive protocol-v4 contract, with no capability negotiation or protocol-version change.

Common event families

• chat: UI chat updates such as chat.inject and other transcript-only chat events. A state: "delta" payload carries the append in deltaText. The first text frame delivered to a recipient for a run also includes the complete message snapshot, including when that recipient attaches mid-run or reconnects. Later append frames omit message. A supplied snapshot is authoritative and already includes deltaText; do not append the delta twice. Non-prefix replacements set replace=true and use deltaText as the entire replacement text, including an empty string to clear it. Replacements and canvas or media changes that require a new baseline include a complete snapshot. Clients retain non-text message blocks across ordinary text appends. Final, aborted, and error events retain their existing complete-message and intentional message-omission semantics. Pending appends are concatenated in order; tool and terminal boundaries flush pending text before settlement. Failed runs (state: "error") may include errorDetail alongside the coarse errorKind and human-readable errorMessage. This closed object has seven optional fields: provider, model, failoverReason, providerRuntimeFailureKind, providerErrorType, httpStatus, and providerErrorMessagePreview. Strings are capped at 300 characters; httpStatus is an integer from 100 through 599. Details come from the failed attempt's sanitized provider observation, not from reparsing the user-facing message. The preview is credential-redacted and may be shorter than the protocol cap. Raw bodies, raw previews, and diagnostic hashes are never included in errorDetail. Runs without provider observations omit it; successful and canceled events do not carry it. This is an additive protocol-v4 field.
• agent: assistant text events use data.delta for appends. Optional data.text is an authoritative snapshot of that assistant item and already includes the delta. The first delivered text event, replacement/item boundaries, and media updates retain snapshots where needed. Honor data.replace, including empty replacements, and keep assistant item text separate from the display-projected chat stream. Subscribe to one text projection for a display; consuming both streams into one accumulator duplicates output. In-process agent observers retain their cumulative-text contract. A client that renders assistant text solely from chat can advertise chat-only-assistant-text in its connect caps. The Gateway then omits text-bearing agent events with stream: "assistant" from that connection, including foreground and background narration subscriptions. Other agent streams (tools, items, usage, run status, lifecycle, plans, and approvals), assistant events without text, and the chat stream are unchanged. Filtered frames do not consume connection sequence numbers. Clients without the capability keep both projections; native clients that display current-item agent text separately from cumulative chat text should not advertise it.
• session.message, session.operation, session.tool: transcript, in-flight session operation, and event-stream updates for a subscribed session.
• session.narration: bounded assistant-text snapshots for subscriptions with narration intent, paced and settled as described above.
• session.approval: sanitized pending and terminal approval truth for an explicitly opted-in exact-session subscriber. Child approvals use the persisted ancestor audience; events never mutate transcripts or wake agents.
• session.observer: safe live session headline and status digest. A model-authored preamble can update the headline immediately; utility-model assessments replace it later when available. Web, iOS, and Android use the same run-scoped digest. Utility-model replies may wrap the JSON digest in one plain or json Markdown fence; surrounding prose and invalid digest fields are rejected. If repeated invalid replies disable the observer for a run, the warning includes a redacted, whitespace-collapsed prefix of the last rejected reply, capped at 160 characters. The optional sessionId and opaque lifecycleRevision identify the session lifecycle; lifecycleRevision can be absent before the first reset. Revisions increase across runs within that lifecycle but can restart after a reset. /clear preserves sessionId and changes lifecycleRevision. Clients show its headline or inspector link only while the digest's exact runId is present in activeRunIds.
• sessions.changed: session index or metadata changed. Keyed changes carry the affected row in session, presented for that connection. Nested rows in sessions.changed and session.message use the same full prepared metadata, viewer permissions, and clock as sessions.list with title, last-message, and activity-summary enrichment enabled. This adds catalog-backed fields such as thinking options and replaces legacy model aliases with canonical model IDs in event rows. The Control UI applies these rows locally to existing roster members, so their values match the list. An explicit model, account, or runtime selection can also mark the event with catalogChanged: true. Full rows can include sessionModelRevision, which changes with saved model, account, runtime, and lifecycle inputs, independently of title and activity. Visible Control UI panes retain matching model catalogs and refresh changed selections immediately. Missing revisions and explicit catalogChanged hints still invalidate the catalog. Session events retain the agent's command list; chat.metadata.changed invalidates commands unless commandsChanged: false. Usage-only and model-only publications leave commands available without another metadata RPC. Top-level lifecycle and capacity fields remain event receipts, including explicit clearing values. When a nested row omits an optional field, honor its top-level clearing tombstone; nested values take precedence when present. Merge an existing roster member's snapshot locally when the query's membership and pagination window remain valid. The Control UI reuses lifecycle and ordinary patch, participants, placement, send, steer, agent.run.started, agent.input.settled, run-capacity, and chat.title snapshots for held rows with unchanged identity, archive, pin, owner, and parent facts and nondecreasing recency. Keyed sessions.changed and session.message publications also carry ancestorSessions, an array of full rows for the affected navigation, control, requester, and swarm ancestors, and may carry ancestorSessionRefs for unchanged ancestor presentations already delivered on that connection. References never appear inside ancestorSessions. The projection walks existing parent references up to the roots, deduplicates physical row identities, and stops cycles. Each ancestor passes the same per-viewer visibility filter and presentation as sessions.list; invisible intermediates do not prevent delivery of visible ancestors above them. The two arrays together contain at most 64 ancestors. If an ancestor cannot be resolved or the traversal exceeds that bound, both fields are omitted so clients retain authoritative refresh behavior. The presence of ancestorSessions certifies complete visible ancestor coverage across both arrays; an empty array certifies no visible ancestors only when ancestorSessionRefs is also absent or empty. These are additive protocol-v4 fields; they do not change subscription scope or list membership and require no capability negotiation. Full ancestor rows carry an opaque ancestorRevision; each reference contains key, revision, and snapshotAt, with sessionId and agentId when present on the full row. Before adding the revision tag, the Gateway compares the exact connection-specific presented row, excluding only snapshotAt. A reference certifies that the presentation identified by revision remains unchanged. Clients retain a referenced row only when they still hold that exact admitted presentation with matching identity, then advance its clock without changing its other facts. The Control UI binds the revision to the immutable admitted row only after confirming that its facts match the full presented row. A list replacement or local row change loses that proof, even if its sampling clock happens to match. Missing rows, generation or revision mismatches, and uncertain presentation ownership require the existing authoritative refresh path. The Gateway bounds this per-connection record and sends full rows after first delivery, a successful list read, reconnect, resubscribe, reset/delete, changed presentation or visibility, eviction, or uncertain delivery. Unsubscribe and disconnect clear the record; session deletion invalidates remembered ancestors. Recap-only (reason: "activity-summary") events keep their ancestor payloads, but full rows in those events retire the corresponding reference records: shared rosters may skip recap admission. The next ordinary event supplies full rows again; unchanged references already held by the client remain reusable. Older web clients ignore the additive reference field. Because ancestorSessions contains full rows only, they cannot apply a reference as a partial row and erase held fields. Missing ancestor snapshots cause their existing authoritative sessions.list refresh. Bundled same-origin Control UI build admission prevents version skew; custom roots, development UIs, and cross-origin clients can use this correct but slower path. Native Apple and Android clients, the TUI, and the SDK do not reconcile ancestor rows and retain their existing behavior. Clients apply the child and held full ancestor rows together, honoring each row's identity and clock. In full snapshots, omitted optional row facts clear previously held values, including child links, swarm summaries, and descendant-running flags. Non-null legacy top-level row fields do not fill omissions in a complete, viewer-filtered row. Explicit null clearing receipts and separate lifecycle receipts remain effective. The existing optional title/preview enrichment and thinking-metadata preservation rules still apply. The Control UI coalesces an authoritative refresh for missing rows or snapshots, broad/keyless changes, catalogChanged, filters whose membership cannot be established from row facts, incomplete ancestor snapshots, and uncertain boundaries (including owner-first rows promoted into the shared page). Events overlapping a roster read retain a trailing refresh so its response cannot lose an update. A retained list with a read error also refreshes on the next relevant event. Profile identity, runner availability, and loaded cron bindings can produce broad invalidations. Activity-summary-only publications update opted-in Activity consumers; shared session and agent rosters do not refetch for those recap-only changes. Held row updates preserve unfiltered and dashboard-filtered windows without refetching; title and preview enrichment flags do not change membership. Healthy row traffic retains one fallback read after at least 60 seconds. Dashboard pagination belongs to the shared roster window, which keeps loaded pages across row updates and coalesces simultaneous reads for the same query. Child windows use the Gateway's ownership receipts and complete parent child lists. Certified excluded ancestor rows can be skipped; references require an admitted current row from the connection's shared provenance owner. The sidebar owner-count facet also retains its aggregate when admitted old and new row facts prove unchanged contributions. Running state, ownership, sharing, archive, or uncertain filter changes still require an authoritative count read. Prepared row publications yield between bounded slices during bursts. Pending activity-summary updates for the same session generation share the latest snapshot; lifecycle, capacity, transcript, deletion, and clearing receipts remain distinct. Publication rechecks row readiness after each yield. Accepted recap notifications outlive the compaction or scheduler work that triggered them. Shutdown stops new notifications and joins admitted publications before closing clients and disposing their projection. Authorized incognito descriptions and events use the same row presentation from transient process-local state. Incognito rows remain excluded from the session roster, and queued events cannot cross a reset or database replacement. Tool/progress events keep delivering while rows refresh; their optional row metadata can be absent until ready. Full roster rows remain guaranteed on keyed sessions.changed and session.message snapshots. Active-run fields use the same aggregate and complete-exact semantics as sessions.list; activeRunIds: null clears cached exact identities to unavailable, omission leaves the cache unchanged, and an array replaces it. Delete notifications from sessions.delete and incognito reset carry the removed generation's sessionId, without a current-row snapshot. Clients must not delete a replacement with a different ID. A key-only delete event or a rowless global notification invalidates the canonical session list; it does not identify the current generation as deleted.
• presence: system presence snapshot updates.
• tick: periodic keepalive/liveness event.
• health: gateway health snapshot update.
• heartbeat: heartbeat event stream update.
• cron: cron run/job change event.
• shutdown: gateway shutdown notification.
• node.pair.requested / node.pair.resolved: node pairing lifecycle.
• node.invoke.request: node invoke request broadcast.
• device.pair.requested / device.pair.resolved: paired-device approval lifecycle.
• device.pair.setup.completed: exact setup-code handoff completion, scoped to operator.pairing.
• device.pair.setup.deliveryUncertain: replay-safe setup-code retirement whose credential response delivery could not be confirmed, scoped to operator.pairing.
• voicewake.changed: wake-word trigger config changed.
• plugins.changed: plugin runtime publication completed. The payload is { generation }; refresh plugins.list to reconcile installed and runtime state.
• config.changed: a config write persisted (payload carries the config path, the new snapshot hash, and a timestamp — never config content). Operator-read scoped; clients refresh via config.get.
• skills.changed: connectivity, the skill catalog, config, or eligibility changed after the gateway invalidated its skills snapshot. The payload's reason is watch, watch-targets, manual, remote-node, config-change, or workshop. Operator-read scoped; clients refresh via skills.status.
• exec.approval.requested / exec.approval.resolved: exec approval lifecycle.
• plugin.approval.requested / plugin.approval.resolved: plugin approval lifecycle.

Node helper methods

Nodes may call skills.bins to fetch the current list of skill executables for auto-allow checks.

Node exec lifecycle events

Nodes report system.run lifecycle through the node-role node.event RPC with event: "exec.started", "exec.finished", or "exec.denied". These are not the operator exec.approval.* broadcasts and do not use the retired TCP bridge.

The RPC accepts a JSON string in payloadJSON or an object in payload. A string payloadJSON takes precedence when both are supplied. For example:

{
  "event": "exec.finished",
  "payload": {
    "sessionKey": "agent:main:main",
    "runId": "<exec-run-id>",
    "host": "node",
    "exitCode": 0,
    "timedOut": false,
    "success": true,
    "output": "done"
  }
}

Current headless nodes include sessionKey, runId, and host: "node". Additional fields are:

Echo the correlation fields forwarded with system.run; neither an ID nor the payload's host field grants authority. The Gateway matches the authenticated node and connection, run ID, and session key when the invocation binds one. Unmatched events return handled: false with reason: "unmatched_exec_event" and produce no system notification. A narrow legacy macOS-client path may match a missing or mismatched run ID only to one unambiguous invocation on that connection/session; new clients must send the issued run ID.

exec.started retains the authorization record; exec.finished and exec.denied consume it before notification filtering. tools.exec.notifyOnExit: false or suppressNotifyOnExit: true suppresses notifications. Denied events never enqueue a system event or wake agent work. Finished events notify only for timeout, nonzero or unknown exit code, or nonempty compacted output; successful exit 0 with no output stays quiet. Finished notifications with a run ID are deduplicated by canonical session and run ID. A heartbeat wake is requested only after a system event is queued.

Node event delivery is best-effort, not a durable completion ledger.