openclaw-agent-updater

name

openclaw-agent-updater

description

Surgically update existing OpenClaw agent workspace files based on conversational change requests — without rewriting the soul, persona, or hard limits. Use this skill when the user says things like "update the agent", "tell NEXUS about the new client", "HUNTER's ICP has changed", "add this to APEX's memory", "RPS paid their invoice", "change SENTINEL's heartbeat", "update the goals", "the client list changed", "add a new cron job", "remove the stale goal", "SCRIBE needs to know about ISO 14001 scope change", or any request to change, add, remove, or refresh content in an existing agent's workspace files. Also trigger when business state changes (new client, lost client, invoice paid, tender outcome, staff change, new service, pricing update) that should be reflected in agent memory. This skill identifies which files and sections need changing, shows exactly what will change before touching anything, makes surgical edits that preserve the persona soul, and outputs ready-to-apply file patches.

OpenClaw Agent Updater

Surgically update existing OpenClaw agent workspace files based on business changes, conversational requests, and evolving context — without touching the soul.

What This Skill Does

Agents go stale. A new client is signed, an invoice is paid, a service is deprecated, a goal is completed, a cron job needs adjusting. This skill handles all of it — precisely, surgically, with a preview before any change is made.

What it NEVER changes (soul-protected):

• ## Core Values in SOUL.md
• ## Boundaries in SOUL.md
• ## Vibe in SOUL.md
• ## Communication Style philosophy in SOUL.md
• IDENTITY.md entirely
• Any hard limit (NEVER rule) in AGENTS.md

What it CAN change:

• ## Context section in SOUL.md (business facts, reporting lines, tools)
• MEMORY.md — any section (add clients, update invoices, log lessons)
• GOALS.md — add goals, update status, move to completed, change priorities
• AGENTS.md — workflows, tool access, escalation rules, report formats
• HEARTBEAT.md — checklist items
• USER.md — owner preferences or contact details
• openclaw.json — model, heartbeat interval, cron jobs, bindings, channel config

---

Change Classification

Before making any edit, classify the incoming request:

Change Type	Affects	Example
Business event	MEMORY.md, GOALS.md	"RPS paid the invoice", "New client: Tivanathi Phase 2"
Goal update	GOALS.md	"Mark the IBS website goal complete", "Add P1 goal for new tender"
Client update	MEMORY.md (client file)	"RPS contact is now Thabo Dlamini", "Tripli scope expanded"
Context change	SOUL.md context section	"We now also offer R&D tax consulting", "Reporting to APEX changed"
Operational change	AGENTS.md	"HUNTER's follow-up cadence is now 21 days max", "Add PITCH to NEXUS's doc workflow"
Infrastructure change	openclaw.json, HEARTBEAT.md	"Change SENTINEL to check every 4h", "Add new cron job for EDGE"
Memory add	MEMORY.md	"Remember that Givemore prefers WhatsApp voice notes"
Lesson learned	MEMORY.md (lessons section)	"Add: always confirm RPS audit dates 2 weeks out"
Stale cleanup	GOALS.md, MEMORY.md	"Remove the completed ESK tender goal", "Archive Tripli invoice"

---

Stage 1: Parse the Change Request

Extract from the user's message:

CHANGE REQUEST PARSED:
Agent(s) affected: [list — or "unknown — need to identify"]
Change type: [from classification table above]
Specific change: [what exactly needs to change]
Files affected: [MEMORY.md / GOALS.md / SOUL.md context / AGENTS.md / HEARTBEAT.md / openclaw.json]
Urgency: [immediate / next session / batch with other changes]

If the affected agent is ambiguous ("update the sales agent"), confirm which agent (HUNTER) before proceeding.

If multiple agents are affected by one change (e.g. "new client Acme Corp" → NEXUS memory + HUNTER memory + SCRIBE context), flag all of them.

---

Stage 2: Locate the Section

Identify the exact section to change. Never ask the user to find it — work it out from the change type:

Change	File	Section
New/updated client	MEMORY.md	## Active Client Files → client subsection
Invoice paid/overdue	MEMORY.md	## Invoice Tracker
Goal completed	GOALS.md	Move from ## Active Goals to ## Completed Goals
New goal	GOALS.md	## Active Goals — insert at correct priority level
Goal status update	GOALS.md	Find goal by name, update Status and Next action
New contact	MEMORY.md	## Key Contacts
New service/offering	SOUL.md	## Context → Services subsection
Lesson learned	MEMORY.md	## Lessons Learned
Heartbeat interval	openclaw.json	agents.list[].heartbeat.every
New cron job	openclaw.json or cron CLI	New entry
Tool access change	AGENTS.md	## Tool Access table
Context fact change	SOUL.md	## Context relevant subsection
HEARTBEAT checklist	HEARTBEAT.md	Relevant checklist item

---

Stage 3: Preview Before Patching

Always show the before/after before writing anything.

Format:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
CHANGE PREVIEW — [AGENT NAME] / [FILE]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

SECTION: [section name]
ACTION: [Replace / Add / Remove / Update field]

BEFORE:
[existing content — or "Section does not exist yet" for additions]

AFTER:
[new content]

Soul-protected: [None affected / list any soul-adjacent edits flagged]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Confirm? (yes / adjust / cancel)

Wait for explicit confirmation before writing. Never auto-apply.

---

Stage 4: Apply the Patch

After confirmation, output the complete updated section (not just the diff — full section text ready to paste):

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
PATCH APPLIED — [AGENT NAME] / [FILE]
Section: [name]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

[Full updated section — ready to copy-paste into the file]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
To apply on server:
  nano ~/.openclaw/workspace-[agentid]/[FILE.md]
  [or] openclaw config set [field] "[value"]  (for openclaw.json changes)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

For openclaw.json changes, produce the CLI command where possible:

openclaw config set agents.list[?(@.id=="sentinel")].heartbeat.every "4h"
# OR if complex: edit ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json directly — provide the exact JSON5 block

---

Batch Updates

When multiple changes hit at once (e.g. "weekly catchup — here's what happened this week"), batch them:

1. Parse all changes from the message
2. Group by agent and file
3. Show all previews together (one block per file per agent)
4. Single confirmation covers all
5. Output all patches in sequence

Batch preview format:

━━━ BATCH UPDATE — [N] changes across [M] agents ━━━

[1/N] NEXUS / MEMORY.md — Update RPS invoice status
[2/N] NEXUS / GOALS.md — Mark ESK tender goal complete
[3/N] HUNTER / MEMORY.md — New lesson learned
[4/N] APEX / GOALS.md — Update pipeline target status

Confirm all? (yes / review individually / cancel)

---

Common Update Patterns

Client invoice paid

MEMORY.md → Invoice Tracker
Change: status from "Outstanding" to "Paid — [date]"
Also check: any GOALS.md goal about this invoice → mark complete

New client onboarded

MEMORY.md → Active Client Files → add new client subsection
GOALS.md → may need new goal for client delivery
SOUL.md context → only if client changes the agent's operating context
Also update: NEXUS (ops), HUNTER (won deal), SCRIBE (if SHEQ client)

Goal completed

GOALS.md:
1. Remove from ## Active Goals
2. Add to ## Completed Goals: "- [COMPLETE] [goal title] — [completion date]"
Also: update any Milestones table entry to ✅ Complete

Lesson learned

MEMORY.md → ## Lessons Learned
Add: "- [lesson]: [context with enough detail to be actionable]"

Heartbeat interval change

openclaw.json: agents.list[id=agentid].heartbeat.every = "new-interval"
CLI: openclaw config set ... OR direct file edit

New cron job

Output: complete openclaw cron add CLI command, ready to run
Include: --name, --cron/--every, --tz, --agent, --session, --message, --model, delivery flags

---

Multi-Agent Cascade

Some business events ripple across multiple agents. Always check:

Event	Agents to update
New client signed	NEXUS (client file), HUNTER (won deal + pipeline), SCRIBE (if SHEQ), APEX (goals)
Invoice paid	NEXUS (invoice tracker + goals), APEX (revenue/goals)
Tender submitted	NEXUS (tender tracker), HUNTER (pipeline), APEX (goals)
Tender won	All of the above + SIGNAL (case study potential), SCRIBE (scope confirmed)
Tender lost	HUNTER (lost reason log), EDGE (loss analysis)
New service launched	SOUL.md context (all relevant agents), SIGNAL (content), HUNTER (offer)
Staff/contact change	MEMORY.md key contacts (all agents that held the contact)
Infrastructure change	SENTINEL (monitoring scope), APEX (context), openclaw.json

When a cascade is detected, list all affected agents and let the user choose which to update in this session.

---

Safety Rules

• Preview always required — never auto-apply any change
• Soul-protected sections are absolute — if a requested change would touch Core Values, Boundaries, or Vibe, refuse and explain why
• Preserve existing structure — don't reorganise sections while updating content
• Preserve voice — edits must match the agent's established tone and style
• One confirmation per batch — don't ask N times for N changes in the same request
• Flag ambiguity — if unclear which agent or section, ask once before proceeding