openclaw-agent-workflow

A lightweight JIRA-like workflow skill for OpenClaw agents. Prevents the three most common failure modes in multi-step agent tasks:

• Silent disappearance — agent stops responding with no explanation
• Status opacity — user has no idea what the agent is doing or how far along it is
• Lost context on failure — when something breaks, nobody knows what was tried or where it stopped

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The Problem

When an OpenClaw agent handles a complex, multi-step task by dispatching sub-agents, things can go wrong silently:

User: "Migrate the database schema and update all dependent services"
Agent: "On it!"
...
[10 minutes of silence]
...
Agent: "Done!" ← Did it actually finish? Was anything skipped?

Or worse:

Agent: "On it!"
...
[silence forever]
...
User: "Hello?"

This skill solves that by giving agents a shared protocol for state transitions, progress reporting, and timeout handling.

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How It Works

Every task moves through defined states with evidence requirements:

planned → dispatching → in_progress → reviewing → done
                              ↓
                           blocked → (resolved) → in_progress

Worker agents report back at key moments (accepted, milestone, blocked, done). If 10 minutes pass without a report, the main agent marks the task as launch_failure and alerts the user.

A live CURRENT_STATE.md file tracks all active, completed, blocked, and failed tasks.

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Installation

Copy this skill into your OpenClaw project:

cp -r openclaw-agent-workflow/ ~/.openclaw/skills/

Or reference it directly in your agent's skill path. Then include it in your agent configuration:

{
  "skills": ["openclaw-agent-workflow"]
}

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Usage

Starting a tracked task

When the main agent receives a multi-step task, it should:

1. Create a task entry in CURRENT_STATE.md with state planned
2. Dispatch to a worker agent with the task ID
3. Wait for the worker's accepted report before proceeding
4. Forward milestone and blocked reports to the user
5. Verify the done report before marking the task complete

Worker agent behavior

Workers follow the reporting protocol in SKILL.md. Every worker must:

• Send accepted within 10 minutes of receiving a task
• Send milestone after each significant step
• Send blocked immediately when stuck
• Send done with a full summary when finished

Example interaction

User: Refactor the auth module and update all callers

[TASK T-001] Dispatched → worker agent
Plan:
- Audit current auth module
- Define new interface
- Rewrite module
- Update callers
- Run tests

[TASK T-001] Progress: Auth module audit complete (12 callers found)
Next: Defining new interface

[TASK T-001] Progress: New interface defined
Next: Rewriting module

[TASK T-001] BLOCKED
Reason: CallerX uses internal auth state not exposed by new interface
Tried: Checked all public methods, reviewed git history
Waiting on: Decision — expose the state or refactor CallerX separately

User: Refactor CallerX separately

[TASK T-001] Progress: Blocker resolved, resuming module rewrite
...

[TASK T-001] DONE
Summary: Auth module refactored, 12 callers updated, CallerX refactored separately
Artifacts: src/auth/index.ts, src/auth/interface.ts, tests/auth.test.ts (+11 files)

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Files

File	Purpose
SKILL.md	Full protocol definition — states, evidence rules, timeouts, report formats
openclaw.plugin.json	Skill registration metadata
CURRENT_STATE.md	Live task state (auto-managed by agents, created on first use)
examples/task-tracking-example.md	Complete worked example

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See Also

• SKILL.md — full protocol specification
• examples/task-tracking-example.md — end-to-end worked example with all report types