Chat Group Behavior

This skill covers the full lifecycle of group chat participation: joining, behaving well while active, and leaving cleanly.

Prerequisites

channels..groupPolicy, groupAllowFrom, and groups.*.requireMention are set so that only the owner can wake you in any group by default. Trigger phrases are defined in agents.list[main].groupChat.mentionPatterns. This applies to WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, and other supported platforms.

Joining a Group

When the owner @mentions you in a group chat, follow these steps in order.

Step 1 — Capture context

From the inbound message metadata: platform (e.g. whatsapp, signal), group ID (the chat_id / from field), and duration (parse from the owner's message — default 30 minutes if unspecified).

Step 2 — Open the gate

Patch channels..groups..requireMention to false in openclaw.json. The gateway file-watches the config and hot-reloads automatically — no restart needed.

Step 2b — Open the sender filter ⚠️ Critical — easy to miss

groupAllowFrom controls not just who can wake you in a group, but also which senders' messages are delivered to you once active. If it's set to only the owner's number (the default), messages from other group members will be silently dropped even with requireMention: false.

Fix: patch channels..groupAllowFrom to ["*"] so all group members' messages are delivered.

This is safe because groupPolicy: "allowlist" still restricts which groups you are active in — opening the sender filter only affects groups you've explicitly joined.

Verify with openclaw doctor — config changes must pass schema validation.

Step 3 — Signal before going quiet

Before doing any work (research, lookups, etc.) triggered by a group message, send a brief acknowledgment first: "On it, give me a moment 👁️" — then go do the work. Silence looks like a crash.

Step 4 — Introduce yourself

Say hi, introduce yourself briefly if it's a new group. Participate like a human — use judgment about when to contribute. Do not respond to every message.

Step 5 — Set a closing cron job

Create a one-shot cron job (kind: "at") for the parsed duration. When it fires: patch requireMention back to true for this group in openclaw.json, then send a brief goodbye. The gateway hot-reloads and the gate closes — no owner action needed.

Step 6 — Confirm to owner

Tell the owner the window is open and when it closes: _"Joined! I'll be here for 60 minutes — going quiet at 4:19 PM."_

Behavior While Active

• One response per message — don't triple-tap with different reactions
• Signal before working — acknowledge first, deliver second (see Step 3)
• Don't dominate — respond when you add value; stay quiet for casual banter between humans
• Be present, not performative — contribute naturally, like a human participant

Leaving a Group

Timed close (automatic):

When the closing cron fires: patch requireMention: true back for this group in openclaw.json, send a brief goodbye to the group. Gateway hot-reloads.

Early close (owner request):

Owner says @ that's enough / close → patch requireMention: true immediately, cancel the cron, say goodbye.

Extend (owner request):

Owner says @ stay for another X mins → cancel existing cron, set a new one.

Troubleshooting

Messages from group members not reaching me:

Check groupAllowFrom — if it's restricted to the owner's number, non-owner messages are silently filtered. Set to ["*"] (see Step 2b).

"thinking/redacted_thinking blocks cannot be modified" errors:

This happens when the session has reasoning tokens in its history and a subsequent API call tries to re-process them. Fix: clear the session transcript file (find it via sessions.json in the agent sessions directory). The session will restart clean on the next message.

Notes

• Group ID is in inbound message metadata (chat_id / from field)
• Config changes hot-reload — no gateway restart or Docker restart needed
• When closing, set requireMention: true for the specific group entry (or remove it to fall back to the wildcard default)
• groupAllowFrom: ["*"] combined with groupPolicy: "allowlist" is the correct secure pattern — open sender filter, restricted group allowlist