PR #76122: fix(agent-timeout): increase DEFAULT_LLM_IDLE_TIMEOUT_SECONDS from 120 to 300

• Repository: openclaw/openclaw
• Author: mgustimz
• State: open | merged: False
• Link: https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/pull/76122

Description (problem / solution / changelog)

Summary

Increases the default LLM idle timeout from 120s to 300s (5 minutes) for local Ollama models.

Problem

Local Ollama models, especially larger models like qwen3.6:35B, require significantly more think time than cloud APIs. The hardcoded 120-second default was too aggressive and caused local models to be cut off mid-think, producing nonsensical responses.

Issue: #76117

Fix

Changed DEFAULT_LLM_IDLE_TIMEOUT_SECONDS from 120 to 300 in src/config/agent-timeout-defaults.ts.

Additional Notes

• Users can still override this via agents.defaults.timeoutSeconds in their openclaw.json config
• This is a non-breaking change — users who explicitly set timeoutSeconds will see no difference
• The change primarily benefits local model users on slower hardware

Changed files

• src/config/agent-timeout-defaults.ts (modified, +1/-1)

PR #76181: fix(ollama): restore catalog-driven num_ctx for native /api/chat and skip idle watchdog for local streams

• Repository: openclaw/openclaw
• Author: openperf
• State: open | merged: False
• Link: https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/pull/76181

Description (problem / solution / changelog)

Summary

• Problem: Issue #76117 reports that after upgrading from v2026.4.26 to v2026.4.29, local Ollama runs against models such as qwen3.6:35B:a3b produce broken output: the model "doesn't know my commands", uses wrong tools, and "says nonsense" on agent turns. Critically, the reporter explicitly says: "So I fixed it [the timeout], and the local LLM still act like a moron" and "I don't care about the latency" — proving the symptom is not caused by the 120s LLM idle watchdog (src/agents/pi-embedded-runner/run/llm-idle-timeout.ts). Bumping the timeout does not help; the request never reaches a timeout — the model finishes streaming, but its output is garbage because it lost context.

• Root Cause: Commit 7559845597 "fix(ollama): avoid implicit native num_ctx override" (2026-04-27, shipped in v2026.4.27 / 4.28 / 4.29) changed resolveOllamaModelOptions in extensions/ollama/src/stream.ts:293 from

  options.num_ctx = resolveOllamaNumCtx(model);  // user-config OR catalog fallback

  to

  const numCtx = resolveOllamaConfiguredNumCtx(model);
  if (numCtx !== undefined) {
    options.num_ctx = numCtx;
  }

  The catalog-based fallback (model.contextWindow ?? model.maxTokens) was lost. For users with a default openclaw.json (no explicit models.providers.ollama.timeoutSeconds and no params.num_ctx), every native /api/chat request now ships without options.num_ctx. Ollama silently falls back to the model's Modelfile default — typically 2048 tokens. A typical OpenClaw agent turn carries a system prompt (~3-5K tokens) plus tool definitions (~3-8K tokens) plus history; the request is silently truncated to the last ~2K, the model loses the tool catalog, and the stream completes with "wrong tools / nonsense" output. This explains every line of the reporter's symptom description and why bumping the timeout did nothing.

  The author's stated intent ("avoid implicit override") was reasonable in spirit — don't second-guess Ollama's Modelfile when the catalog has no opinion — but the implementation also dropped catalog-known windows (qwen3.6 → 32K/128K, llama3 → 128K, gemma3 → 128K) which OpenClaw's catalog already records. Those values are not an implicit override; they are explicit information Ollama has no way to recover.

• Fix: Add a narrow resolveOllamaNativeNumCtx(model) helper that resolves in priority order: (1) explicit params.num_ctx; (2) catalog contextWindow / maxTokens if present; (3) undefined (let the Modelfile decide for unknown models). Wire it into resolveOllamaModelOptions. This restores 4.26 behavior for all known models without re-introducing the DEFAULT_CONTEXT_TOKENS fallback that the original commit deliberately removed for unknown models — which preserves the "avoid implicit override" intent for genuinely catalog-less models.

  In the same PR, this change is bundled with a related but distinct fix on the LLM idle watchdog (the original scope of this PR): the 120s default watchdog encodes a network-silence-as-hang assumption that does not hold for local providers (loopback / RFC 1918 / RFC 6598 CGNAT / .local). When no explicit timeout is configured, the watchdog is now skipped for local provider URLs. This is a real bug — local sockets do not stall — but it is adjacent to, not the cause of, the user-reported symptom in #76117. We keep the two changes together because the watchdog change had already passed bot review on this branch and removing it would be churn.

• What changed:

  • extensions/ollama/src/stream.ts — added resolveOllamaNativeNumCtx; resolveOllamaModelOptions now uses it instead of resolveOllamaConfiguredNumCtx. Catalog windows survive the trip to Ollama.
  • extensions/ollama/src/stream-runtime.test.ts — updated four assertions that previously locked in the broken num_ctx === undefined behavior on models that explicitly set contextWindow; added two new assertions: catalog window is forwarded as num_ctx, and an unknown catalog still leaves num_ctx absent (preserving the original commit's intent for that case).
  • src/agents/pi-embedded-runner/run/llm-idle-timeout.ts — provider-aware watchdog: skip the default fallback when model.baseUrl is loopback / RFC 1918 / RFC 6598 / .local and no explicit timeout is configured. Strict IPv4-literal regex guards against numeric-looking hostnames such as http://10.0.0.5evil:11434.
  • src/agents/pi-embedded-runner/run/llm-idle-timeout.test.ts — coverage for local/non-local IPv4 boundaries (RFC 1918 ranges, RFC 6598 CGNAT, 127/8 full range), numeric-hostname injection cases, malformed baseUrl, explicit timeout interaction.
  • src/agents/pi-embedded-runner/run/attempt.ts — passes params.model (typed as { baseUrl?: string }, mirroring the existing requestTimeoutMs cast on the same call) into resolveLlmIdleTimeoutMs.

• What did NOT change (scope boundary):

  • extensions/ollama/src/stream.ts:createOllamaStreamFn request flow, /api/chat body shape, header construction, SSRF policy — unchanged. Only the value carried in options.num_ctx changes, and only for models that have catalog data.
  • resolveOllamaNumCtx (used by the OpenAI-compatibility wrapper path) — unchanged. The compat path still has its DEFAULT_CONTEXT_TOKENS fallback because that path wraps a request that already shipped without num_ctx; it is the right place to backstop with a constant.
  • streamWithIdleTimeout itself, abort plumbing, hook signatures — unchanged.
  • DEFAULT_LLM_IDLE_TIMEOUT_MS, DEFAULT_LLM_IDLE_TIMEOUT_SECONDS, DEFAULT_CONTEXT_TOKENS — same values, same semantics, same defaults for cloud/wrapper paths.
  • Provider plugins, models.json schema, config schema, docs (docs/providers/ollama.md), CHANGELOG.md — unchanged. (CHANGELOG is intentionally left for the maintainer to slot under the right release on merge.)
  • Cron trigger, explicit runTimeoutMs, explicit agents.defaults.timeoutSeconds, explicit models.providers.<id>.timeoutSeconds paths — bit-for-bit identical.
  • Remote provider behavior (any non-local baseUrl) — bit-for-bit identical.

Reproduction

1. Install OpenClaw v2026.4.29 (or any version since 7559845597, 2026-04-27) with a default openclaw.json — no models.providers.ollama.timeoutSeconds, no models.providers.ollama.params.num_ctx.
2. Run an Ollama daemon on http://127.0.0.1:11434:

   ollama pull qwen3.6:35B

3. Issue any agent-style request that requires tool selection:

   openclaw infer model run \
     --model ollama/qwen3.6:35B \
     --prompt "Plan three sequential bash commands and call them via tools."

4. Before this PR: The model loses the tool catalog (truncated to ~2048 tokens), invents tool names that do not exist, picks the wrong tool, or returns plain prose where structured tool calls were required. Bumping agents.defaults.timeoutSeconds does not help — confirmed by the issue reporter: "I fixed it, and the local LLM still act like a moron."
5. After this PR: The full system prompt and tool definitions reach the model because num_ctx = 131072 (or whatever the catalog records for that model) flows through to Ollama. Tool selection and answers behave as they did on v2026.4.26.
6. Regression check (must keep working): a remote provider such as https://api.openai.com/v1 still receives the existing 120s idle watchdog; an Ollama model with no catalog contextWindow still ships without num_ctx so the Modelfile decides — preserving the 7559845597 author's "avoid implicit override" intent for that case.

Risk / Mitigation

• Risk: Forwarding catalog contextWindow as num_ctx will cause Ollama to allocate the corresponding KV cache. On memory-constrained hosts, a model whose catalog says 131072 will use noticeably more RAM/VRAM than the Modelfile's 2048 default. This matches v2026.4.26 behavior exactly, but represents a change vs. current main for users who upgraded between 4.27 and now and silently adapted to the truncated context.
• Risk: A user who manually created a custom Ollama provider entry without populating contextWindow will get the new "no num_ctx" behavior — the same as today, no regression.
• Risk: The watchdog change disables a guard for local providers that was incorrectly applied to begin with. A genuinely hung local Ollama daemon will no longer self-abort at 120s; agent / run / explicit provider timeouts still bound the request.
• Mitigation:
  • Users who want the post-7559845597 "trust Modelfile" behavior can opt out by removing contextWindow from their custom catalog entries, or by setting models.providers.<provider>.params.num_ctx to the Modelfile value explicitly.
  • The new resolveOllamaNativeNumCtx helper is internal; the public resolveOllamaNumCtx (used by the compat wrapper) is unchanged so the wrapper-side fallback semantics are untouched.
  • Coverage: existing extensions/ollama/src/stream-runtime.test.ts tests for native /api/chat are updated; two new tests assert the catalog-fallback and the no-catalog-no-num_ctx contracts. Coverage on the watchdog side asserts both local and non-local ranges, numeric-hostname injection, and explicit-timeout interaction.
  • No use of any. The new helper signature is (model: ProviderRuntimeModel) => number | undefined. The watchdog parameter is structurally typed as { baseUrl?: string }.

Why this is the root cause and not a symptom patch

The reporter's exact words ("I fixed it [the timeout], and the local LLM still act like a moron") are the load-bearing evidence. A fix that targets the 120s watchdog leaves the reporter's symptom intact, because the request was never being aborted; it was being truncated before it even left OpenClaw. The smallest change that restores 4.26-equivalent behavior for the reporter's repro is to put num_ctx back into the request body. The PR does exactly that, and bundles the orthogonal watchdog cleanup that was already accepted on this branch.

Change Type (select all)

• Bug fix

Scope (select all touched areas)

• Ollama provider extension
• Agents / pi-embedded-runner

Changed files

• extensions/ollama/src/stream-runtime.test.ts (modified, +60/-4)
• extensions/ollama/src/stream.ts (modified, +29/-1)
• src/agents/pi-embedded-runner/run/attempt.ts (modified, +1/-0)
• src/agents/pi-embedded-runner/run/llm-idle-timeout.test.ts (modified, +102/-0)
• src/agents/pi-embedded-runner/run/llm-idle-timeout.ts (modified, +87/-0)