openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Cron agent turn can perform side effects then time out before final artifact delivery

Summary

A scheduled Codex app-server agent turn can successfully perform the requested side effect, then stall before emitting the final assistant artifact. OpenClaw marks the cron run as failed and sends a timeout alert even though the external artifact exists.

This is distinct from a pure pre-side-effect timeout: the scheduler currently has no reconciliation step that can detect the already-created artifact and convert the run into a successful or partially successful result.

Observed

• OpenClaw version: 2026.5.18.
• Runtime: Codex app-server via a scheduled agentTurn.
• The job created and pushed the expected GitHub pull request.
• Later, the turn hit terminal idle timeout and surfaced:
  • Request timed out before a response was generated. Please try again, or increase agents.defaults.timeoutSeconds in your config.
• Internal diagnostic for the timed-out turn showed the last activity was a completed reasoning item, followed by no terminal event until the watchdog fired.
• The cron state became failed and triggered a failure alert, even though a fresh GitHub query showed the expected PR artifact existed.

Expected

For scheduled jobs with explicit completion artifacts, OpenClaw should support one or both of:

• A post-timeout reconciliation hook/check that can inspect declared artifacts and emit a verified partial/success state when the side effect exists.
• More specific timeout diagnostics that distinguish no side effect performed from side effect performed but final assistant message was not captured.

At minimum, the user-facing timeout guidance should not imply that increasing only agents.defaults.timeoutSeconds is the correct fix when the failure is an app-server terminal-idle stall after side effects.

Local mitigation used

The affected cron prompt was tightened to:

• Preflight-check for an existing matching PR and exit without creating duplicates.
• Finish immediately after verifying the PR exists instead of waiting for CI/review/secondary systems.
• Use a lower reasoning setting for this small-refactor creator job.

A separate review/merge cron was then run to reconcile the existing PR.