openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix client.connect() not awaited — failed connection stored in clients map [1 comments, 2 participants]

Severity: medium / Confidence: medium / Category: bug Triage: risk Detected against: openclaw v2026.5.18 (latest stable at time of scan, 2026-05-18) Tooling: clawpatch 0.3.0 + acpx/claude-sonnet-4-5 via Brad Mills protocol

Evidence

• extensions/twitch/src/twitch-client.ts:148-151 (getClient)

client.connect();

    this.clients.set(key, client);
    this.logger.info(`Connected to Twitch as ${account.username}`);

Reasoning

client.connect() is fire-and-forget. The log line says 'Connected' but connection has not been confirmed. More critically, if the initial connection attempt fails with an unrecoverable error (bad credentials, network unreachable) before any reconnect logic kicks in, the client is already stored in this.clients. The next call to getClient for the same account returns the broken client at line 86-87 without retrying setup. disconnectAll will call quit() on it, which is safe, but the window between failed connect and explicit disconnect silently serves a broken client.

Reproduction

Provide invalid credentials so the first connect() fails immediately. Call getClient a second time — it returns the stored broken client without re-attempting auth.

Recommendation

Await client.connect() or add an onAuthenticationFailure/onDisconnect handler that deletes the key from this.clients so a subsequent getClient rebuilds cleanly. At minimum, do not emit the 'Connected' log before the connection resolves.

Why existing tests miss this

Tests mock sendMessageTwitchInternal and never exercise the actual ChatClient.connect() path. The lifecycle tests mock monitorTwitchProvider at a level above getClient.

Suggested regression test

Unit-test getClient with a ChatClient mock whose connect() rejects; assert this.clients does not retain the entry and a second getClient call attempts fresh setup.

Minimum fix scope

Delete the entry from this.clients in an onDisconnect/onAuthFail handler registered before connect(), or await connect() and delete the entry on failure.

Standardized clawpatch finding. Persistent in v2026.5.18 (not resolved by upgrading from v2026.5.12). Finding ID: fnd_sig-feat-cli-command-0c715f7406-_450fcbe91a.