RPC Adapters
RPC adapters for external CLIs (signal-cli, imsg) and gateway patterns
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 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.