ACP agents operator runbook

• Spawn creates or resumes an ACP runtime session and records ACP metadata in the OpenClaw session store. Parent-owned runs use the native subagent lifecycle for completion.
• A failed spawn waits for any already-started provisional session deletion to finish before returning, including when the cleanup request deadline expires.
• Parent-owned ACP sessions are treated as background work even when the runtime session is persistent; completion and cross-surface delivery follow their accepted native completion path rather than acting like a normal user-facing chat session.
• The ACP control plane closes one-shot runtime handles after the turn settles. Persistent sessions keep their ACP session and binding lifecycle; use /acp close to end one explicitly. Cleanup does not depend on a Tasks record.
• Bound follow-up messages go directly to the ACP session until the binding is closed, detached, reset, or expired.
• Gateway commands stay local. /acp ..., /status, and /session are never sent as normal prompt text to a bound ACP harness.
• cancel aborts the active turn when the backend supports cancellation; it does not delete the binding or session metadata.
• Turn completion waits for queued output delivery. If delivery fails, OpenClaw cancels the active turn and waits for backend cleanup before starting the next queued turn, within the configured turn timeout.
• close ends the ACP session from OpenClaw's point of view and removes the binding. A harness may still keep its own upstream history if it supports resume.
• The acpx plugin cleans up OpenClaw-owned wrapper and adapter process trees after close, and reaps stale OpenClaw-owned ACPX orphans during Gateway startup.
• Idle runtime workers are eligible for cleanup after the built-in idle period; stored session metadata remains available for /acp sessions.

Natural-language triggers that should route to the native Codex plugin when it is enabled:

• "Bind this Discord channel to Codex."
• "Attach this chat to Codex thread <id>."
• "Show Codex threads, then bind this one."

Native Codex conversation binding is the default chat-control path. OpenClaw dynamic tools still execute through OpenClaw, while Codex-native tools such as shell/apply-patch execute inside Codex. For Codex-native tool events, OpenClaw injects a per-turn native hook relay so plugin hooks can block before_tool_call, observe after_tool_call, and route Codex PermissionRequest events through OpenClaw approvals. Codex Stop hooks are relayed to OpenClaw before_agent_finalize, where plugins can request one more model pass before Codex finalizes its answer. The relay stays deliberately conservative: it does not mutate Codex-native tool arguments or rewrite Codex thread records. Use explicit ACP only when you want the ACP runtime/session model. The embedded Codex support boundary is documented in the Codex harness v1 support contract.

• legacy Codex model refs - legacy Codex OAuth/subscription model route repaired by doctor.
• openai/* - native Codex app-server embedded runtime for OpenAI agent turns.
• /codex ... - native Codex conversation control.
• /acp ... or runtime: "acp" - explicit ACP/acpx control.

Triggers that should route to the ACP runtime:

• "Run this as a one-shot Claude Code ACP session and summarize the result."
• "Use Gemini CLI for this task in a thread, then keep follow-ups in that same thread."
• "Run Codex through ACP in a background thread."

OpenClaw picks runtime: "acp", resolves the harness agentId, binds to the current conversation or thread when supported, and routes follow-ups to that session until close/expiry. Codex only follows this path when ACP/acpx is explicit or the native Codex plugin is unavailable for the requested operation.

For sessions_spawn, runtime: "acp" is advertised only when ACP is enabled, the requester is not sandboxed, and an ACP runtime backend is loaded. acp.dispatch.enabled=false pauses automatic ACP thread dispatch but does not hide or block explicit sessions_spawn({ runtime: "acp" }) calls. It targets ACP harness ids such as codex, claude, droid, gemini, or opencode. Do not pass a normal OpenClaw config agent id from agents_list unless that entry is explicitly configured with agents.entries.*.runtime.type="acp"; otherwise use the default sub-agent runtime. When an OpenClaw agent is configured with runtime.type="acp", OpenClaw uses runtime.acp.agent as the underlying harness id.