virtual-scott-tick

name	virtual-scott-tick
description	Autonomous tick — invoked by the OpenClaw cron job every 5 minutes. Runs the deterministic Python orchestrator that discovers replyable comments and dispatches the reply skill for each. Not meant to be invoked manually outside of `openclaw cron run virtual-scott-tick` or `make poll-now`.
user-invocable	false

Autonomous tick

Cron-fired entry point for the autonomous Virtual Scott loop. This skill's whole job is to delegate to the deterministic Python orchestrator at ~/.openclaw/workspace-virtual-scott/scripts/vs-tick.py.

The orchestrator handles: kill-switch check, WP REST discovery, filtering, rate-limit cap, per-candidate dispatch to a child agent running virtual-scott-reply, and success/failure logging into runs/successes.jsonl / runs/failures.jsonl.

Why the logic lives in Python, not in this skill body: LLM-driven orchestration of an N-iteration loop with branching is unreliable. Deterministic shell/Python is the right tool for the loop layer; the LLM is the right tool for the per-comment reasoning layer. Each per- comment reply IS a full agent invocation of virtual-scott-reply — so the autonomous behavior is still openclaw-native, just with a thin deterministic conductor.

What to do

Run exactly one tool call. That's the entire skill.

• Tool: exec
• Command:

  python3 /home/smbaker/.openclaw/workspace-virtual-scott/scripts/vs-tick.py
  

The script's stdout is human-readable; report it verbatim in your reply to the user.

If the exit code is non-zero, also report stderr. Do not retry. Do not try to do the orchestration in your own reasoning instead of running the script.

Kill switch

If the file ~/.openclaw/workspace-virtual-scott/PAUSED exists, the script prints a "PAUSED" line and exits 0 without doing anything. Pause: touch ~/.openclaw/workspace-virtual-scott/PAUSED. Resume: rm ~/.openclaw/workspace-virtual-scott/PAUSED. The Makefile exposes make pause and make resume.

Configuration

Two env vars, both optional, both honored by the Python script:

• VS_MAX_REPLIES_PER_CYCLE (default 1): cap on replies per tick.
• VS_AGENT_TIMEOUT_SEC (default 600): timeout per child agent invocation.

These can be set in the cron job's env (via OpenClaw cron config) or directly when running make poll-now.