openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix feat: bot-to-bot loop detection when allowBots=true [1 participants]

Problem

When allowBots: true is enabled to allow multi-agent collaboration in a Discord channel, two bots can enter an infinite loop:

1. Bot A posts a message that @Bot B
2. Bot B receives it, processes it, responds with @Bot A
3. Bot A receives that, processes it, responds with @Bot B
4. Repeat until rate-limited

In our case, this ran for 42+ iterations before Anthropic rate limits stopped it, causing:

• ~80 duplicate messages in session history
• All other agents on the same API key became rate-limited
• Wasted tokens/credits

Current behavior

allowBots: true + requireMention: true allows bot-to-bot @ mentions with no frequency limiting. The gateway has no awareness that a bot-to-bot conversation is looping.

Proposed solution

Add bot-to-bot loop detection at the gateway level:

{
  channels: {
    discord: {
      allowBots: true,
      botLoopProtection: {
        enabled: true,           // default: true when allowBots=true
        maxBotToBotPerMinute: 3, // max bot→bot messages per minute per pair
        cooldownSeconds: 60,     // pause bot→bot after hitting limit
      }
    }
  }
}

Detection logic

Track (senderBotId, receiverBotId, channelId) tuples with timestamps:

• If the same bot pair exchanges > N messages in M seconds → suppress
• Log a warning: [discord] bot-to-bot loop detected (botA↔botB), suppressing for 60s
• After cooldown, allow again (the conversation may have moved on)

Why not just disable allowBots?

Multi-agent collaboration is a core use case. Agents need to @ each other for task delegation, code review, etc. The fix should be rate limiting, not disabling.

Environment

• OpenClaw 2026.3.28
• Two gateways (production + Docker staging) with different bot tokens in the same Discord server
• Channel has requireMention: false for one bot and requireMention: true for the other