openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Gmail watcher should honor 429 retry-after and avoid repeated history/message fetch retries

Environment

• OpenClaw 2026.5.22 (a374c3a)
• gogcli 0.15.0
• Trigger path: Gmail Pub/Sub push handling in gog gmail watch serve

Impact

A parked legacy Gmail watcher repeatedly hit Gmail 429 rateLimitExceeded during push handling. The Gmail retry-after timestamp kept moving forward because the handler continued receiving Pub/Sub retries and making Gmail API calls instead of circuit-breaking the affected account.

Evidence

Runtime logs repeatedly showed push-handler failures like:

watch: handle push failed: googleapi: Error 429: User-rate limit exceeded. Retry after <redacted-timestamp>, rateLimitExceeded

Additional observations:

• The errors were from push handling, not only manual watch start attempts.
• Local config had already paused the legacy account by blanking the relevant hooks.gmail.account value.
• The legacy Pub/Sub subscription was absent locally.
• gog gmail watch status --account <redacted-legacy-account> still showed a stored server-side Gmail watch expiring May 31, 2026.
• gog gmail watch stop --account <redacted-legacy-account> --force succeeded and cleared the stale local watch state.

Expected behavior

When Gmail returns 429 with a retry-after value, the watcher should pause Gmail API fetches for that account until after the retry-after time. Pub/Sub push handling should not continue making history.list / messages.get calls on every redelivery while the account is already rate-limited.

Suggested fix

• Add a per-account 429 circuit breaker in gog gmail watch serve.
• Persist the retry-after timestamp in watch state.
• While the circuit is open, return a controlled response and avoid Gmail API calls for that account.
• Consider a lower-cost metadata-only mode for low-importance watchers.
• Add an explicit command to pause/stop the server-side watch while keeping local config parked.

Local recovery used

Stopped the stale server-side watch for the parked legacy account and left only the intended workspace watcher active. After recovery, the parked account had no local listener, no legacy Pub/Sub subscription, and no stored gog watch state.