ai-collab — Autonomous Multi-Agent Collaboration

Two OpenClaw agents working in parallel on shared tasks, coordinated via a structured chat log and daemon inbox protocol.

Architecture Overview

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                     User (Jeremy)                       │
│               Telegram / Direct Message                  │
└──────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────┘
                       │
         ┌─────────────┴──────────────┐
         ▼                            ▼
┌─────────────────┐         ┌──────────────────┐
│   AGENT A       │         │   AGENT B        │
│  (Jim / main)   │◄───────►│ (Clawdy / daemon)│
│  claude code    │         │ claude --print    │
│  port: main     │         │ inbox: filesystem │
└────────┬────────┘         └────────┬─────────┘
         │                           │
         └──────────┬────────────────┘
                    ▼
         ┌──────────────────┐
         │   chat.log       │ ← THE shared record
         │   collab/inbox/  │ ← A→B messages
         └──────────────────┘

Agent A (Primary): Interactive Claude Code session. Handles browser, complex tasks, user-facing responses.

Agent B (Daemon): claude --print subprocess. Handles background tasks, monitoring, quick lookups. Triggered by messages dropped in inbox.

Configuration

All settings via environment variables — no hardcoded values:

# ~/.openclaw/workspace/collab/.ai-collab.env
export AGENT_A_NAME=Jim
export AGENT_B_NAME=Clawdy
export AGENT_B_MODEL=claude-haiku-4-5-20251001   # Any claude --print compatible model
export AGENT_B_SESSION=clawdy-session             # tmux session name
export COLLAB_INBOX=$HOME/.openclaw/workspace/collab/inbox
export COLLAB_LOG=$HOME/.openclaw/workspace/collab/chat.log

Supported models for AGENT_B_MODEL:

• claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 — fastest, cheapest (recommended for daemon)
• claude-sonnet-4-6 — more capable, higher cost
• Any OpenAI model if using the GPT daemon variant (see examples/claude-gpt.md)

Quick Setup

# 1. Source config
source ~/.openclaw/workspace/collab/.ai-collab.env

# 2. Create the collab workspace
mkdir -p "$COLLAB_INBOX"

# 3. Start Agent B daemon (in a tmux session)
tmux new-session -d -s "$AGENT_B_SESSION" \
  "source ~/.openclaw/workspace/collab/.ai-collab.env && \
   bash ~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/ai-collab/scripts/daemon.sh"

# 4. Start message polling (Agent B → Agent A routing, runs every 60s via cron)
bash ~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/ai-collab/scripts/poll_chatlog.sh &

# 5. Test the link
bash ~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/ai-collab/scripts/send.sh "Hello from Agent A"

Communication Protocol

Every message between agents follows this format. No open loops.