openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix [Enhancement] Fuzzy Matching for Edit Tool or Auto-Fallback to apply_patch to Prevent Stalls [1 comments, 2 participants]

Summary

The edit tool's strict string matching (requiring oldText to match exactly, including all whitespace/indentation) is a primary cause of Agent Stuck Loops and Gateway Stalls in complex coding tasks.

Problem

When an LLM generates oldText with minor whitespace hallucinations (e.g., Tab vs. Space, missing trailing newline), the edit tool fails with Could not find the exact text.

1. Retry Loop: The Agent attempts to "guess" the correct text multiple times.
2. Resource Exhaustion: These retries consume high CPU and block the Event Loop.
3. Gateway Stall: As seen in issues like #78402, this eventually causes the Gateway to hang.

Proposed Solution

1. Fuzzy Match Mode: Implement a "Fuzzy Match" logic for edit that ignores minor whitespace differences (normalizes indentation before matching).
2. Auto-Fallback: If edit fails > 2 consecutive times, the Runtime should force the Agent to switch to apply_patch (which uses robust line-based diffs) or suggest using sed via terminal.
3. Context Hint: On failure, return the 3 lines of context around the mismatch to help the Agent correct its oldText rather than blind guessing.

Relation

This complements #60816 (which handles "no-op" detection) and #78402 (Gateway stalls). This issue addresses "partial matches" that fail, which are the real cause of the loops.