openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix OpenClaw: `sessions_spawn` parameter `streamTo: "parent"` is intermittently rewritten by an internal redaction layer

Repo: openclaw/openclaw Component: main session / tool argument plumbing (not yet localised to a specific module — needs investigation) Found: 2026-05-12 while wiring an acp-watch live observability window for ACP-harness spawns.

Summary

When the main agent calls sessions_spawn({ ..., streamTo: "parent" }), the literal string "parent" is sometimes rewritten to a placeholder value (e.g. "__OPENCLAW_REDACTED__") by an internal redaction layer before the call reaches schema validation. The tool then rejects with streamTo: must be equal to one of the allowed values, even though the agent passed the legal value.

When this happens the agent must omit streamTo entirely to make the spawn succeed — but that means the spawn returns no streamLogPath, and no live-watch terminal can be opened.

Reproduction

Repeated sessions_spawn calls with runtime: "acp", agentId: "claude", streamTo: "parent". Around 2-3 attempts in 10 today were rewritten to "__OPENCLAW_REDACTED__". The trigger seems context-dependent (something in the surrounding prompt activates the redaction).

Suggested fix

Whatever pattern is matching "parent" and rewriting it to a redaction placeholder is too aggressive. Either:

1. Make the redaction layer aware of tool-argument schemas — known-legal values for streamTo should never be rewritten.
2. Apply the redaction strictly to user-visible content paths (chat surfaces) and not to tool-call argument plumbing.

Workaround

Omit streamTo on rewrite. Loses live-streaming-to-parent — caller has to fall back to acp-watch --latest and hope the right log was created.

Environment

• OpenClaw 2026.5.7
• macOS 15 (arm64), Node 24.15.0
• main agent on Telegram channel
• target: runtime: "acp", agentId: "claude" (@openclaw/acpx)