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openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Sub-agent completion relay can stall after successful work when post-run wrapper hangs [1 participants]

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openclaw/openclaw#61798•Fetched 2026-04-08 02:54:21
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Sub-agent / specialist orchestration can complete the underlying work successfully, but the final completion payload fails to relay back to the parent session.

Root Cause

Likely root cause

A post-run wrapper step (likely issue update / comment / announce) can hang after successful work completion, preventing final parent-session delivery.

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Summary

Sub-agent / specialist orchestration can complete the underlying work successfully, but the final completion payload fails to relay back to the parent session.

Observed behaviour

In a real run for Academighty GH#34:

  • specialist artifacts were fully generated
  • git commits were present in the target repo
  • orchestrator sequence state showed Thor complete through Ratatoskr
  • the spawned sub-agent later reported as already finished
  • but the parent session never received the normal completion handoff/result payload

This left the user-facing session appearing "stuck" even though the work was already done.

Evidence from the run

Observed in run artifacts under: orionclaw/agents/odin/portfolio/projects/academighty/src/runs/2026-04-06-issue-34-unified-question-engine

Notable signals:

  • .orchestrator-sequence-thor.json shows completion through ratatoskr
  • Thor artifacts exist:
    • 22a-njord-tdd-registry-core.md
    • 22b-modi-implementation-registry-core.md
    • 22c-njord-validation-registry-core.md
    • 23-tyr-review-registry-core.md
    • 24-ratatoskr-qa-registry-core.md
    • 25-thor-registry-core-summary.md
  • git history in the target repo includes the completed slice commits
  • steering the sub-agent later returned: ... is already finished
  • however, no normal completion event surfaced to the parent conversation

Additional clue from the generated Thor summary:

Specialist wrappers intermittently hung after writing artifacts while attempting post-run issue updates

That strongly suggests the failure is in post-run bookkeeping / announce / issue-update plumbing, not in the actual specialist execution or artifact generation.

Expected behaviour

If the sub-agent run completes its artifact and orchestration work, the parent session should always receive a final completion payload, even if post-run GitHub comment/update steps fail.

Actual behaviour

The final completion relay appears to be coupled to post-run wrapper behaviour strongly enough that the parent can be left waiting indefinitely for a result that never arrives.

Likely root cause

A post-run wrapper step (likely issue update / comment / announce) can hang after successful work completion, preventing final parent-session delivery.

Suggested fixes

  1. Decouple final parent completion delivery from post-run GitHub update/comment steps
  2. Mark orchestrator completion as soon as required artifacts + summary are present
  3. Treat issue-update/comment failures as non-fatal warnings
  4. Add watchdog/timeout protection around post-run wrapper steps
  5. Emit a fallback completion event if the run is already marked complete in orchestrator state but no relay has been sent

Impact

High UX cost:

  • users think the run is still in progress
  • operators waste time polling/intervening
  • completed work can be missed until someone manually inspects repo artifacts

extent analysis

TL;DR

Decoupling the final parent completion delivery from post-run GitHub update/comment steps is likely to resolve the issue of the parent session not receiving the completion payload.

Guidance

  • Review the post-run wrapper steps to identify potential hang points and refactor them to be non-blocking or add timeout protection.
  • Implement a fallback completion event if the run is already marked complete in orchestrator state but no relay has been sent.
  • Consider treating issue-update/comment failures as non-fatal warnings to prevent them from blocking the final completion delivery.
  • Verify that the orchestrator completion is marked as soon as required artifacts and summary are present, to ensure timely completion delivery.

Example

No specific code snippet is provided, as the issue description does not include explicit code references.

Notes

The suggested fixes assume that the issue is indeed related to the post-run wrapper steps and the coupling of final parent completion delivery to these steps. Further investigation may be necessary to confirm this assumption.

Recommendation

Apply workaround: Decouple final parent completion delivery from post-run GitHub update/comment steps. This is likely to resolve the issue and improve the user experience by ensuring timely completion delivery, even if post-run steps fail.

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openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Sub-agent completion relay can stall after successful work when post-run wrapper hangs [1 participants]