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Which protocol versions a client may negotiate, and the constants a reference client ships with.

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Versioning

  • PROTOCOL_VERSION, MIN_CLIENT_PROTOCOL_VERSION, MIN_NODE_PROTOCOL_VERSION, and MIN_PROBE_PROTOCOL_VERSION live in packages/gateway-protocol/src/version.ts.
  • Clients send minProtocol + maxProtocol. Operator and UI clients must include the current protocol in that range; current clients and servers run protocol v4.
  • Authenticated clients with both role: "node" and client.mode: "node" may use the N-1 node protocol (currently v3). Lightweight restart probes use the same N-1 window. Device auth, pairing, scopes, command policy, and exec approvals are unchanged by this compatibility window. Plugin-owned node capabilities and commands are withheld until the node upgrades to the current protocol because their hosted surfaces are not part of the N-1 contract.
  • Schemas and models are generated from TypeBox definitions:
    • pnpm protocol:gen
    • pnpm protocol:gen:swift
    • pnpm protocol:check

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Client constants

The reference client implementation lives in packages/gateway-client/src/ (OpenClaw wraps it via the thin src/gateway/client.ts facade). These defaults are stable across protocol v4 and are the expected baseline for third-party clients. The server advertises the effective policy.tickIntervalMs, policy.maxPayload, policy.maxBufferedBytes, and policy.attachments in hello-ok; clients should honor those values rather than the pre-handshake defaults or hardcoded attachment sizes. The reference client lets finite requests own their configured deadline when every pending request has one. An expectFinal request without a finite timeoutMs, any request with timeoutMs: null, or a mix of finite and unbounded requests keeps the tick watchdog active. If inbound events and responses remain silent past the tick-timeout threshold, the client closes the socket with code 4000, rejects every pending request, and reconnects. It does not replay rejected requests after reconnecting.