openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Feature: channel reload <provider> — reinitialise single channel without full gateway restart [1 comments, 2 participants]

Summary

Currently, toggling channels.<provider>.enabled requires a full gateway restart. This is unnecessarily heavy for a single-channel state change and creates UX problems: all in-flight sessions pause, exec sessions are killed, and any tooling that triggers the restart (e.g. cron jobs) races against its own completion flush.

Proposed Command

openclaw channel reload whatsapp
openclaw channel reload telegram

Behaviour

• Tears down only the named channel's provider connection
• Reinitialises it from current config (reads channels.<provider>.* fresh)
• Does not interrupt other channels, active sessions, or the cron scheduler
• Returns success/failure with channel status after reinit

Equivalent API Surface

A POST /api/v1/channels/<provider>/reload endpoint on the gateway HTTP API, so agents and scripts can trigger it programmatically without shell access.

Why This Matters

• Channel enable/disable (e.g. overnight WhatsApp quiet hours) currently requires a full gateway restart
• Full restart kills exec sessions mid-run, causing write-ordering races with cron job completion flush — specifically: a cron job that modifies channels.<provider>.enabled triggers hot-reload, which schedules a restart that races against the cron scheduler's lastRunAtMs flush, resulting in missed-job replay on boot
• A channel reload eliminates this entire bug class for toggle-style automation
• Reduces restart frequency, improving session continuity reliability

Current Workaround

Isolated agentTurn cron jobs that exec shell scripts — relies on hot-reload deferring the restart until the agent turn completes (after lastRunAtMs is written). Works, but adds unnecessary complexity and is fragile.

Confirmed Behaviour (from logs)

config change requires gateway restart (channels.whatsapp.enabled) — deferring until operations complete

channels.whatsapp.enabled is explicitly restart-required. There is no current path to toggle a channel without full restart.