Sport Mode

Sport Mode

Temporarily boost heartbeat frequency (default 3m) and inject a monitoring task into HEARTBEAT.md. Perfect for supervising background agents (Codex), long-running builds, or interactive games.

Usage

# Turn ON: Set heartbeat to 3m and set monitoring task
sport-mode on --task "Check Codex progress. If done, run sport-mode off."

# Custom Interval: Set to 1 minute
sport-mode on --task "Game tick" --every "1m"

# Turn OFF: Reset heartbeat to 30m and clear HEARTBEAT.md
sport-mode off

How it works

1. ON:
   • Patches ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json (hot-reload) to set heartbeat.every.
   • Writes your task to HEARTBEAT.md with a "Sport Mode Active" header.
2. OFF:
   • Patches config back to 30m (default).
   • Clears HEARTBEAT.md.

Best Practices (Critical)

1. State Machine Pattern (Stateful File, Stateless Agent)

Treat HEARTBEAT.md as a dynamic progress bar, not a static sticky note. Since you lose chat context between heartbeats, you MUST write your current state and next step into the file.

• Bad: "Monitor M1-M4." (Agent forgets which milestone it's on)
• Good: "Current: M1. If done, update this file to 'Current: M2'."

2. The "Liveness Report" Rule

Prevent silent death. Long-running tasks can look like they're working when they're actually stuck. To avoid checking in forever with HEARTBEAT_OK:

• Rule: If you have sent HEARTBEAT_OK for approx. 30 minutes (e.g., 30 times @ 1m, or 6 times @ 5m), you MUST break silence and send a status update.
• Format: "Still running [task]... Last log: [snippet]"
• This reassures the user that the process hasn't hung.

3. Use tmux for Visibility

If the monitoring task involves terminal output (e.g., Codex coding, compiling), running the task in a tmux session is ideal.

• The agent can inspect the pane (tmux capture-pane) without interfering.
• The user can attach (tmux attach) to watch live.
• Tip: Append ; echo Done; read to your command. This keeps the tmux window open if the process crashes or exits, allowing you to inspect logs.
  • ✅ tmux new-session -d -s task "codex ...; echo Done; read"
  • ❌ tmux new-session -d -s task "codex ..." (Window closes on exit)

4. Set a Finish Line

Unless you want an endless marathon, always define a termination condition.

• ✅ "If success or fail, run sport-mode off."
• ❌ "Monitor build."

Template: HEARTBEAT.md

When activating sport mode, write HEARTBEAT.md using this structure:

# 🏎️ Sport Mode Active
Target: 1m

## Task
Count down from 5.
State: 5

## Instructions
1. Decrement state (5 -> 4).
2. If State > 0, update this file with new state.
3. If State == 0, run: `sport-mode off`.
4. If State == 0, notify user: "Countdown finished!"

Implementation Note

This skill uses openclaw config set to safely patch configuration at runtime, triggering a seamless Gateway reload.