openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Bug: cron.maxConcurrentRuns setting has no effect — cron jobs still spawn N parallel runs per trigger [1 comments, 1 participants]

Summary

Setting cron.maxConcurrentRuns: 1 in openclaw.json has no observable effect. Cron jobs continue to spawn multiple parallel runs per trigger (consistently 5 in our setup).

Environment

• OpenClaw version: 2026.3.24 (cff6dc9)
• OS: macOS 25.3.0 (arm64)
• Gateway mode: LaunchAgent (local)
• Multiple gateway instances on same host (ports 18789–18798)

Steps to Reproduce

1. Add to openclaw.json:

{
  "cron": {
    "maxConcurrentRuns": 1
  }
}

1. Restart gateway with full bootout + load: launchctl bootout gui/$UID/ai.openclaw.gateway && launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ai.openclaw.gateway.plist
2. Wait for any cron job to fire
3. Check cron runs via openclaw cron runs <jobId>

Observed Behaviour

Every cron trigger spawns exactly 5 parallel runs simultaneously (same runAtMs timestamp, different sessionIds):

runAtMs: 1775180942348 → sessionId: 861fbf9d (Haiku, 28s)
runAtMs: 1775180942349 → sessionId: 3b810bb2 (Haiku, 7s)
runAtMs: 1775180942349 → sessionId: c400d30b (Sonnet, 6s)
runAtMs: 1775180942354 → sessionId: 447d4dda (Haiku, 5s)
runAtMs: 1775180942356 → sessionId: be01d959 (Haiku, 4s)

Note: one run always uses Sonnet (4 input tokens, 124 output) while the others use Haiku. The Sonnet run appears to be a dispatcher/health-check instance.

Expected Behaviour

With maxConcurrentRuns: 1, each cron trigger should spawn exactly 1 run.

Impact

5× unnecessary API calls per cron trigger. With multiple cron jobs and 10-minute intervals, this results in significant unnecessary spend. We estimate this has been active since gateway setup and may account for –300/month in duplicate API calls across a 9-gateway fleet.

Additional Context

• Setting was applied to all 9 gateway instances (separate openclaw.json per gateway)
• Full bootout+load restart confirmed on each instance (not kickstart)
• Behaviour is consistent across all gateways regardless of maxConcurrentRuns value
• The 5 parallel runs pattern exists even for jobs with sessionTarget: isolated (fresh session per run — no session contention possible)
• Related: #47381 (model override in cron agentTurn also ignored)