RPC Adapters

OpenClaw integrates external CLIs via JSON-RPC. Two patterns are used today.

Pattern A: HTTP daemon (signal-cli)

  • signal-cli runs as a daemon with JSON-RPC over HTTP
  • Event stream is SSE (/api/v1/events)
  • Health probe: /api/v1/check
  • OpenClaw owns lifecycle when channels.signal.autoStart=true

See Signal for setup and endpoints.

Pattern B: stdio child process (imsg)

  • OpenClaw spawns imsg rpc as a child process
  • JSON-RPC is line-delimited over stdin/stdout (one JSON object per line)
  • No TCP port, no daemon required

Core methods used:

  • watch.subscribe → notifications (method: "message")
  • watch.unsubscribe
  • send
  • chats.list (probe/diagnostics)

See iMessage for setup and addressing (chat_id preferred).

Adapter guidelines

  • Gateway owns the process (start/stop tied to provider lifecycle)
  • Keep RPC clients resilient: timeouts, restart on exit
  • Prefer stable IDs (e.g., chat_id) over display strings
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