Project Manager Agent

Description

Monitors active sub-agents, detects stalls, provides status updates, and steers stuck agents via sessions_send.

Project Manager Agent

This skill provides oversight for your OpenClaw sub-agents. It proactively checks the status of running sub-agents, identifies potential stalls or failures, and can steer stalled sub-agents by sending a continue message via the sessions_send tool.

Usage

Running the monitor

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Options

• - --staleness_threshold_minutes <int>: Minutes after which a sub-agent is considered stalled (default from config or 10).
• INLINECODE1: Check all sessions, not just subagents of the current main session.
• INLINECODE2: Print human summary then a JSON line with stalledSessionKeys, steerMessage, and summary for agent steering.
• INLINECODE6: Output all stalled keys (ignore 15-minute cooldown).
• INLINECODE7: Record these session keys as just steered (for cooldown). Run after calling sessions_send.

Example (Status check, human-only)

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Example (Agent run with steering)

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Then parse the last line (JSON), call sessions_send for each key in stalledSessionKeys, and optionally run --record-steered <keys>.

Features

• - Sub-agent Monitoring: Lists all active sub-agents (file-based; no gateway API in the script).
• Stall Detection: Flags sub-agents that haven't updated their status within a configurable time period.
• Failure Identification: Reports on sub-agents that have aborted their last run.
• Status Reports: Human-readable summaries and optional JSON with stalledSessionKeys for steering.
• Automated Steering: When you run the skill with --json, parse the output and call sessions_send for each stalled session (see Agent instructions below).

Agent instructions (mandatory when running this skill)

When the user or a cron asks you to run the project-manager-agent skill:

1. 1. Run the script with --json (and existing args as needed):

   python3 /Users/ghost/.openclaw/workspace/skills/project-manager-agent/scripts/project_manager.py --json --staleness_threshold_minutes 10
   

1. 2. Parse the script stdout: The last line is a single JSON object with stalledSessionKeys, steerMessage, and summary. Parse it (e.g. take the last line that starts with { and ends with }).
2. If stalledSessionKeys is non-empty:

     python3 /Users/ghost/.openclaw/workspace/skills/project-manager-agent/scripts/project_manager.py --record-steered <key1> <key2> ...
     

1. 4. Reply to the user/cron with the status summary (the human-readable part of the script output) and, if you steered any, add: "Steered N stalled subagent(s)."

You have access to sessionslist and sessionssend; the script only produces the list of session keys to steer. Steering is done by you in the same turn via the sessions_send tool.

Config (optional)

See config.json for: staleness_threshold_minutes, steer_cooldown_minutes, steer_message, max_steer_per_run.

Integration as a Cron Job

This skill is ideal for a cron job, running periodically (e.g., every 5 minutes). The agent runs the script with --json, steers stalled subagents via sessions_send, and announces the status.

Example Cron Job Payload:

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