openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix [Bug]: Plugin metadata cache hits flood diagnostics scan spans [1 pull requests]

Bug type

Behavior bug (incorrect output/state without crash)

Beta release blocker

No

Summary

Plugin metadata cache hits still emit plugins.metadata.scan diagnostics spans, flooding the timeline on hot paths even when the cached snapshot is reused.

Steps to reproduce

1. Run a long-lived OpenClaw gateway workload with active session, subagent, and plugin metadata traffic.
2. Capture a CPU profile and diagnostics timeline.
3. Inspect the profile/timeline for the call chain described in the evidence below.

Expected behavior

Cache hits should return the memoized plugin metadata snapshot without emitting full scan diagnostics spans; real scans should continue to emit plugins.metadata.scan.

Actual behavior

Profile and timeline evidence showed plugins.metadata.scan count=25478 and repeated cache-hit scan spans associated with plugin metadata hot paths.

OpenClaw version

Current main source checkout before the linked fix branch; exact release build is NOT_ENOUGH_INFO.

Operating system

NOT_ENOUGH_INFO

Install method

Source checkout / development workflow.

Model

NOT_ENOUGH_INFO

Provider / routing chain

NOT_ENOUGH_INFO

Additional provider/model setup details

Not model-specific; this is a gateway/session/plugin hot-path performance issue.

Logs, screenshots, and evidence

Timeline proof showed plugins.metadata.scan count=25478, sumMs=281718, maxMs=360.577. Source evidence pointed at loadPluginMetadataSnapshot cache-hit handling in src/plugins/plugin-metadata-snapshot.ts.

Impact and severity

Affected: plugin metadata lookup, gateway control-plane metadata paths, and diagnostics timeline size. Severity: Medium. Frequency: every metadata cache hit in the captured run. Consequence: noisy diagnostics and avoidable per-hit span overhead.

Additional information

Public issue extracted from local redacted performance evidence under /mnt/c/OpenClaw/bugs/BUG-043-plugin-metadata-scan-cache-hits-flood-the-diagnostics-timeline-and-still-clone-snapshots. Private session labels, transcript paths, setup names, and raw local paths were not included.