openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Control UI auth retry loop + blocking chat.history causes Slack Socket Mode disconnects [1 comments, 2 participants]

Summary

Control UI with a stale/expired gateway auth token retries WebSocket connection every ~16 seconds indefinitely, instead of stopping and prompting the user to re-enter the token. Combined with chat.history appearing to block the Node.js event loop for ~12 seconds, this causes Slack Socket Mode pong timeouts and repeated socket disconnects.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Have Slack channel running via Socket Mode
2. Open Control UI in a browser tab
3. Gateway restarts (or token rotates for any reason)
4. Control UI now has a stale token

Observed Behavior

• Control UI retries WebSocket auth every ~16 seconds with token_mismatch — never stops, never prompts user
• chat.history WebSocket handler takes ~12-13 seconds to complete
• During that ~12s window, the Node.js event loop appears blocked — Slack WebSocket pong responses cannot be sent
• Slack SDK fires pong timeout (5000ms) → socket disconnect → reconnect takes 35-40 seconds
• Any Slack messages sent during disconnect windows are delayed until reconnection
• Net effect: simple Slack DMs take 50-110+ seconds to get a response, even though model latency is ~3 seconds

Evidence Pattern

On every gateway restart, chat.history completion and Slack pong timeout occur within 1-3ms of each other:

[ws] chat.history completed (12667ms)    ← 13:06:24.895
[WARN] pong not received before 5000ms!  ← 13:06:24.898

This pattern was consistent across 4 consecutive restarts.

Expected Behavior

1. Control UI should stop retrying on auth failure and display a clear "token expired — please re-enter" message instead of silently looping every 16 seconds
2. chat.history should not block the event loop — 12+ seconds of synchronous work on what should be a local operation is excessive and starves other WebSocket connections (Slack, Telegram) of pong responses
3. A UI authentication issue should never be able to degrade channel connectivity

Workaround

Closing the Control UI browser tabs immediately resolved the issue — Slack response time dropped from ~57 seconds to ~7 seconds.

Environment

• OpenClaw v2026.4.24
• Node.js v24.13.1
• Slack channel in Socket Mode
• Linux (Fedora)