OpenClaw (subagent / task delegation)

What is it

This skill teaches your agent to use an agent from another vendor as a subagent.

Almost every coding agent has a headless mode. Headless mode runs the agent from the terminal with one command and returns the answer to stdout. This skill gives the command pattern for one such agent, and the protocol to transfer enough context with the task.

You stay the main agent. You keep the plan, the decisions and the conversation with the user. The subagent does one bounded task and reports back.

When to delegate

• The user asks for it. The user names another agent, or asks for a second opinion.
• Large or multi-step work. The task covers several files, phases or checkpoints.
• Code review with a fresh mind. Another agent reviews the work with a different lens and no memory of the decisions that produced it.
• Planning that needs different ideas. A second agent proposes options that you did not consider.
• An internal council. Several subagents answer the same question, and you compare the answers.
• Deep research. The other CLI has web search, web extraction or browser automation.
• Background investigation. A long task runs in the background while you continue in the foreground.

When not to delegate

• Small or single-step tasks. One or two edits, or a short explanation, are faster in this thread.
• Tight feedback loops. The user wants quick back-and-forth in one conversation.
• Secrets or policy-sensitive work. Do not pipe credentials into a subagent. Redact first.
• Context you already hold. Repeating the whole plan in a prompt adds no value.
• Low return on investment. If writing the handoff costs more than doing the edit, do the edit.
• Work that needs high precision and full judgement. A subagent without your context will break a task that depends on a detail only this session knows.

Delegation and context transfer protocol

An isolated subagent saves tokens, but it splits the story. The subagent does not see this conversation. It has no memory of the goal you agreed with the user, the decisions you already made, or the paths you agreed not to touch. A poor handoff causes misread tasks, wrong assumptions about the stack or the style, and wasted edits.

Treat every call as stateless delegation: the subagent keeps nothing between calls, so each command must carry its own state. A good handoff happens when you keep these practices in mind:

• Shared state handoff. The prompt carries the original goal, the decisions already made, and the explicit scope, to bridge the subagent's missing session history.
• Contextual preservation. The high-volume work stays in the isolated process, so the bulk never enters this conversation and no "split story" forms from missing history.
• Result reconciliation. What comes back is folded into this thread afterwards, so there is a single source of truth.

Write the prompt as a transfer of shared state, not as a title. Include all six fields:

Prefer sequential delegations with explicit carry-over. Parallel runs diverge unless every run gets the same briefing.

Run the subagent in the mode that does the work without asking for approval. Headless mode has nobody to answer a permission prompt. Any mode that stops to ask will stall, or return an empty answer with a success exit code. Each CLI names this mode differently — take the flag from the vendor card below.

Never call a subagent in plan mode. Many CLIs have a plan or read-only mode. That mode makes the other agent write a plan for itself, which is not what you asked for: you want its work or its answer, and you keep the planning. Plan mode also waits for someone to approve that plan, so the run comes back with nothing. If you want no file changes, keep the auto-approving mode and write "report only, no edits" in the Output field. Do not use plan mode to make a run read-only.

After the subagent returns:

• Report to the user. Give a short summary. Do not paste long logs unless the user asks.
• Reconcile the context. Record the decisions it made, the files it changed, and the open risks, so this session stays the single source of truth.

CLI failure modes

Every vendor has its own terminal rules. A headless run fails quietly more often than it fails loudly.

• Wrap the call in an external timeout. A headless CLI can stall before its own timeout starts.
• Exit code 0 is not success. If stdout is empty, treat the run as failed and read stderr. A permission the CLI could not ask for, and a prompt that never arrived, both look like success.
• Never carry a flag habit from one CLI to another. The same short flag means different things in different tools. In OpenCode, -p is --password: passing a prompt to it empties the message and the run waits on stdin forever. Confirm every flag against the CLI's own --help.
• An unrecognized-flag error means this skill is stale, not that the task is impossible. Read --help, continue with the flags that exist, and tell the user which line in this file is wrong.

Vendor card

Binary and prompt form

• Binary: openclaw
• Install: curl -fsSL https://openclaw.ai/install.sh | bash (official install page, https://docs.openclaw.ai/install). It needs Node 24.16.0+ on 24.x, or 26.1.0+. The page also lists npm install -g openclaw@latest --allow-scripts=openclaw.
• Prompt form: positional, after the agent exec subcommand: openclaw agent exec "prompt" (usage: openclaw agent exec [options] [message]). For a long handoff, use --message-file <path> instead, or --message-file - to read it from stdin.
• Use agent exec, not plain agent. The binary describes openclaw agent as "Run an agent turn via the Gateway", so it routes through a Gateway service that must already be running. agent exec is "Run one isolated headless embedded agent turn" and needs no Gateway, no daemon and no prior setup. It is the only form that works on a machine where nothing else was started first.
• The verified trap: on openclaw agent, -m is --message, not --model. --model has no short form. A habit carried over from another CLI where -m selects the model will silently send the model name as the prompt. agent exec has no -m at all — pass the prompt positionally.

Headless and output flags

--json belongs to the subcommand, not to openclaw itself. The global flags are --container, --dev, --log-level, --no-color, --profile, -V and -h.

With --json, stdout carries the envelope alone and every diagnostic goes to stderr, so openclaw agent exec "…" --json can be parsed directly without filtering. Read the answer from .final. The envelope also carries ok, status (ok, error or timeout), payloads, model, provider, sessionId, usage (omitted when unavailable), and error with message and kind when the run fails. The vendor docs also list optional costUsd, codeModeEngaged, assistantTurns, bridgeCalls and toolSummary.

Exit codes (vendor docs): 0 success, 1 model or result error (also a cleanup failure after a successful run; the output is kept), 2 timeout, 130 SIGINT, 143 SIGTERM. Only 1 was reproduced on 2026.9.5. A failed run still prints a well-formed envelope with "ok": false, so check .ok as well as the exit code.

Approvals and permissions

Observed on 2026.9.5: OpenClaw auto-approved by default, so a headless run did not stall. openclaw exec-policy show on a clean 2026.9.5 install reported security=full, ask=off and askFallback=deny, all marked as OpenClaw's own defaults. The current docs state only that the default askFallback is deny; they do not state default security or ask values. Re-run openclaw exec-policy show on the build you use. There is no per-run approve-all flag in agent exec.

This is the one CLI in this catalogue where the mode that works without asking is not a flag but the default state of the host. So:

1. Check, do not assume. Run openclaw exec-policy show and read the Effective column. If it shows security=full and ask=off, delegate normally.
2. If the host has been tightened — cautious or deny-all — say so and stop. Tell the user they can restore auto-approval with openclaw exec-policy preset yolo, and let them run it. Do not change their approval policy yourself: it is host-wide configuration, not a flag on your call.
3. askFallback=deny means an exec request that falls through to asking is denied, not queued, so a tightened host fails fast rather than hanging. Plugin and system-agent approvals are a separate queue and can still be waiting: list them with openclaw approvals pending and clear them with openclaw approvals resolve.

Models and how to list them

Run openclaw models list --json for the identifiers this install accepts — the only authority. --all shows the full catalogue, --refresh rediscovers providers first, and --provider <id> filters.

Select with --model <provider/model>. Add --fallback <provider/model> for an ordered fallback chain; it is repeatable and requires --model. If the user names a model, use it. Otherwise ask the binary first. For capability and price comparisons, check Artificial Analysis and the vendor's own documentation.

Command pattern

openclaw agent exec "GOAL: [goal] | DECISIONS: [decisions] | SCOPE: [paths] | CONSTRAINTS: [constraints] | VERIFICATION: [test_command] | OUTPUT: [format]" \
  --json --model <provider/model> --cwd /absolute/path/to/repo --timeout 900

For a handoff too long to sit comfortably on one command line, write it to a file first:

openclaw agent exec --message-file ./task.md --cwd /absolute/path/to/repo --json --timeout 900

Prompt examples

• Implement: openclaw agent exec "GOAL: [goal] | DECISIONS: [decisions] | SCOPE: [paths] | VERIFICATION: [test_command] | OUTPUT: files changed" --cwd /abs/repo --json --timeout 900
• Review: openclaw agent exec "GOAL: Review [scope] for [concerns] | CONSTRAINTS: do not edit any file | OUTPUT: findings with severity" --cwd /abs/repo --json
• Investigate: openclaw agent exec "GOAL: Map how [feature] works | SCOPE: [paths] | CONSTRAINTS: do not edit any file | OUTPUT: file:line map" --cwd /abs/repo --json

Docs and reference

• Flags, models, approvals, Gateway and paths: reference.md
• Vendor documentation: https://docs.openclaw.ai/cli/agent
• Checked against openclaw 2026.9.5 on 2026-09-20 (binary), and against the official documentation on 2026-11-05 (not run against the latest build, 2026.11.1). Flags, the JSON envelope, the stdout/stderr split, exit code 1 and the default approval policy came from real runs on 2026.9.5. The exit-code table, --timeout semantics, --config-override and the extra envelope keys come from https://docs.openclaw.ai/cli/agent and were not reproduced. reference.md states the provenance of each claim.