openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Phantom user messages appear in webchat after heartbeat wakes / gateway restart / session repair [1 comments, 2 participants]

TL;DR

The issue can likely be mitigated by improving subagent diagnostics and session repair mechanisms to prevent context bleed and spurious message generation.

Guidance

• Investigate the subagent-orphan-recovery events and stuck session diagnostics to identify the root cause of the phantom messages.
• Review the session file repair mechanism to ensure it does not rewrite assistant messages as user messages.
• Consider adding provenance information to messages to distinguish between user-generated and system-generated messages.
• Verify the issue by reproducing the steps outlined in the reproduction section and observing the behavior.

Example

No code snippet is provided as the issue does not contain sufficient code-related information.

Notes

The issue may be related to the specific version of OpenClaw (2026.4.29) and the Node version (v22.22.2), but without further information, it is difficult to determine the exact cause.

Recommendation

Apply workaround: Implement a temporary fix to the session file repair mechanism to prevent rewriting assistant messages as user messages, and investigate the subagent diagnostics to prevent spurious wake events. This is recommended as it addresses the immediate issue and allows for further investigation into the root cause.