openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix [Feature]: Add built-in token budget and request limit controls [1 comments, 1 participants]

Summary

Introduce built-in controls for token budgets and request limits at request/session/daily levels to prevent uncontrolled usage.

Problem to solve

OpenClaw currently lacks built-in mechanisms for enforcing token usage limits or request caps.

While external tools such as diagnostics-otel can observe token consumption, they do not provide any form of active control or intervention.

This leads to several issues:

• No per-request token budget enforcement
• No per-session or per-user token limits
• No daily usage caps
• No automatic stopping when token usage exceeds a threshold
• No safeguards against infinite recursive or looping agent calls

In failure scenarios (e.g., unsolvable tasks or bad prompts), agents may enter infinite loops, continuously issuing requests and consuming tokens without bound.

Proposed solution

Introduce configurable budget and limit controls, including:

1. Token budget controls:

   • maxTokensPerRequest
   • maxTokensPerSession
   • maxTokensPerDay (per user or API key)

2. Request limits:

   • maxRequestsPerSession
   • maxRequestsPerMinute (rate limiting)

3. Safety mechanisms:

   • Automatic interruption when limits are exceeded
   • Warning hooks (logs/events) before reaching limits
   • Loop detection (e.g., repeated identical tool calls or prompts)

4. Configuration scope:

   • Global defaults
   • Per-account overrides
   • Optional per-agent overrides

Example:

{
  "limits": {
    "maxTokensPerRequest": 4000,
    "maxTokensPerSession": 20000,
    "maxTokensPerDay": 100000,
    "maxRequestsPerSession": 50
  }
}

This is an example. The specific figures are for reference only.

Alternatives considered

No response

Impact

Affected:

• All users running agents in production

Severity:

• High (can lead to uncontrolled cost and system instability)

Frequency:

• Intermittent but critical

Consequence:

• Unexpected cost spikes
• Infinite loops consuming resources
• Operational instability

Evidence/examples

No response

Additional information

No response