Introduction
# error-guard
⚠️ **System‑level skill (Advanced users)**
This skill defines the **control‑plane safety primitives** for OpenClaw. It is intentionally minimal, non‑blocking, and designed to prevent agent freezes, deadlocks, and unrecoverable states when running long‑lived or high‑risk workloads.
## Design Principles
> **Warning:** This skill operates at the agent control‑plane level. > It should be installed only by users who understand OpenClaw’s execution model and are running workloads that can block, hang, or run for extended periods.
- **Main agent never blocks**: no long exec, no external I/O, no LLM calls. - **Event-driven**: workers emit events; the control plane listens. - **Fail-safe first**: recovery commands must always respond. - **Minimal state**: track only task metadata (never payloads).
## Command Surface (Phase 1)
### /status
Report current system health and task registry state.
Returns: - Active tasks (taskId, type, state) - Start time and last heartbeat - Flags for stalled or overdue tasks
Constraints: - Must run in constant time - Must not call any model or external API
### /flush
Emergency stop.
Immediately: - Cancel all active tasks - Kill active exec/process sessions - Clear pending message queue - Reset in-memory task registry
Constraints: - Must always respond - No waiting on workers - No model calls
### /recover
Safe recovery sequence.
Steps: 1. Execute `/flush` 2. Reset control-plane state 3. Optionally reload skills/state (no container restart)
## Future Extensions (Not Implemented Yet)
- Sub-agent runner helper (event-driven) - Task watchdogs with TTL and silence detection - Structured event protocol (task.started, task.heartbeat, task.completed, ...) - Back-pressure and task classes (interactive / batch / background)
## Security & Privacy
- This skill **does not** store payloads, prompts, messages, or model outputs - Only minimal task metadata is persisted (taskId, timestamps, state) - No API keys, credentials, or user data are read or written - Safe to publish and share publicly
## Non-Goals
- No business logic - No background polling loops - No user-facing features - No LLM reasoning paths
This skill is the **last line of defense**. Keep it small, fast, and reliable.