Problem

Gateway crashes with an unhandled promise rejection when completing a subagent run, due to a NOT NULL constraint violation on task_runs.requester_session_key.

Error

[openclaw] Unhandled promise rejection: Error: NOT NULL constraint failed: task_runs.requester_session_key
    at upsertTaskWithDeliveryStateToSqlite (pi-embedded-BE6Oo-8e.js:14879:24)
    at withWriteTransaction (pi-embedded-BE6Oo-8e.js:14849:3)
    at persistTaskUpsert (pi-embedded-BE6Oo-8e.js:14968:9)
    at updateTask (pi-embedded-BE6Oo-8e.js:15269:2)
    at updateTaskStateByRunId (pi-embedded-BE6Oo-8e.js:15657:16)
    at markTaskTerminalByRunId (pi-embedded-BE6Oo-8e.js:15698:9)
    at completeTaskRunByRunId (pi-embedded-BE6Oo-8e.js:15875:9)
    at completeSubagentRun (pi-embedded-BE6Oo-8e.js:16223:47)

Timeline

1. 15:11 — Heartbeat triggers, spawns subagent. Also logs: Failed to create background task for subagent run with ERR_SQLITE_ERROR / errcode: 1299 (constraint failed)
2. 15:19 — Subagent completes, completeSubagentRun calls upsertTaskWithDeliveryState with null requester_session_key → unhandled promise rejection
3. 15:25 — Gateway process crashes and restarts (new PID observed)

Probable cause

The subagent task row was not properly created at spawn time (step 1 already failed with constraint error). When the subagent later completed and tried to upsert the delivery state, the missing row caused a NOT NULL violation that was not caught, leading to an unhandled rejection that killed the process.

Workaround

Deleting the corrupted database allows fresh starts:

mv ~/.openclaw/tasks/runs.sqlite ~/.openclaw/tasks/runs.sqlite.bak

Impact

• Gateway crashes → all channels disconnect
• Running subagents lose their delivery target
• Requires manual restart

Expected behavior

1. completeSubagentRun should handle missing/corrupt task rows gracefully (try/catch)
2. If task creation fails at spawn time, the error should not silently propagate to completion time
3. SQLite constraint violations should never cause unhandled promise rejections

Environment

• OpenClaw: 2026.4.1
• OS: Linux 6.8.0-106-generic (x64)
• Node: v22.22.1

Related

• #58786 (subagent announce timeout destabilizes gateway — may share root cause with corrupt task state)