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openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix [Bug]: Assistant can answer a previous user question after a long multi-tool turn

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In a live chat, after a long multi-tool turn, the assistant can resume the previously active reasoning branch and answer an older user question instead of the newest incoming one.

This seems especially likely when:

  • the assistant is doing long exec / process poll work,
  • new user messages arrive while that work is happening,
  • and system/control-ui style messages interleave with the chat.

This feels adjacent to message ordering / interruption handling, but the user-visible failure is more specific: the assistant produces a coherent reply, just to the wrong question.

Root Cause

This is confusing even when the answer content is otherwise reasonable, because it makes the assistant feel like it is lagging behind the conversation and ignoring the latest user input.

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Summary

In a live chat, after a long multi-tool turn, the assistant can resume the previously active reasoning branch and answer an older user question instead of the newest incoming one.

This seems especially likely when:

  • the assistant is doing long exec / process poll work,
  • new user messages arrive while that work is happening,
  • and system/control-ui style messages interleave with the chat.

This feels adjacent to message ordering / interruption handling, but the user-visible failure is more specific: the assistant produces a coherent reply, just to the wrong question.

User-visible behavior

The user asks a new question, but the assistant replies to the prior question/thread it had been investigating before the latest message arrived.

In practice it looks like:

  1. user asks question A
  2. assistant starts a long multi-tool investigation
  3. user asks question B
  4. assistant finishes tool work and replies to question A instead of B

Expected

Before sending a final answer after long tool work, the assistant should re-anchor on the newest user message and answer that message first.

Actual

The assistant can remain attached to the earlier active branch and emit a stale-branch answer.

Conditions observed

  • Telegram DM session
  • OpenClaw Control UI / system messages also present in transcript
  • long-running tool work (exec, process poll)
  • multiple nearby questions on related topics

Why this matters

This is confusing even when the answer content is otherwise reasonable, because it makes the assistant feel like it is lagging behind the conversation and ignoring the latest user input.

Hypothesis

There may be a stale-branch / re-anchoring issue after long tool latency where the runtime resumes the previous active reasoning branch instead of strongly prioritizing the newest user turn before finalizing output.

Potential contributing factors:

  • interleaved system/control-ui messages
  • long tool spans with delayed results
  • insufficient interruption/preemption semantics for in-flight reasoning branches

Useful direction to investigate

  • force a final pre-send check against the newest user message after any long tool phase
  • inspect whether new inbound messages are correctly invalidating the active branch that started before those messages arrived
  • compare against existing message ordering / interruption issues to see whether this is a distinct bug or a narrower manifestation of the same runtime problem

extent analysis

TL;DR

Implement a final pre-send check to ensure the assistant's response is anchored to the newest user message after long tool phases.

Guidance

  • Investigate the handling of interleaved system/control-ui messages and their impact on the active reasoning branch.
  • Verify that new inbound messages are correctly invalidating the active branch that started before those messages arrived.
  • Consider adding interruption/preemption semantics for in-flight reasoning branches to prioritize the newest user turn.
  • Inspect the message ordering logic to determine if this issue is a distinct bug or a narrower manifestation of an existing runtime problem.

Example

No code snippet is provided as the issue does not contain specific code references.

Notes

The issue seems to be related to the handling of long-running tool work and the interleaving of system/control-ui messages. The proposed solution focuses on ensuring the assistant's response is correctly anchored to the newest user message.

Recommendation

Apply a workaround by implementing a final pre-send check to ensure the assistant's response is anchored to the newest user message after long tool phases. This approach is chosen because it directly addresses the observed user-visible behavior and provides a clear direction for investigation and potential resolution.

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#prompt template#agent execution#callback error#memory management#API rate limit

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openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix [Bug]: Assistant can answer a previous user question after a long multi-tool turn