openclaw/DESIGN-cron-on-exit.md

feat(cron): on-exit schedule — fire a job when a watched command/process exits

Problem

Event-driven wakes that start a fresh agent turn already work (the wake/system event RPC). But an agent cannot reliably arm "wake me when this command/process exits" itself: CLI backends run each turn as a supervisor-spawned detached process group that is signalProcessTree(SIGTERM→SIGKILL)'d at turn end (src/process/supervisor/adapters/child.ts, intentional, #71662). Any process the agent backgrounds via exec is in that tree and dies with the turn. The only escape (setsid + raw node dist/entry.js system event …) is hand-rolled, fragile, and observed to take down the host. Applies to all spawn-and-kill CLI backends (claude-cli verified), not the TLS proxy.

Design

A new cron schedule kind on-exit, executed by a gateway-supervisor-owned watcher — independent of #83738 (rides the existing main-session cron run pipeline, not the manual wake path).

• CronSchedule gains { kind: "on-exit"; command: string; cwd?: string } (PID-watch variant deferred).
• computeNextRunAtMs() returns undefined for on-exit → the time-based timer never fires it.
• createCronExitWatchers() (extracted into src/gateway/cron-exit-watchers.ts, wired from buildGatewayCronService via reconcileExitWatchers() / stopExitWatchers()) owns the watcher lifecycle, backed by getProcessSupervisor(). It exposes reconcile(jobs) / cancel(jobId) / cancelAll() / activeJobIds().
  • On reconcile, each enabled on-exit job reserves a watcher slot synchronously (with an armToken), then spawns the command via supervisor.spawn({ mode:"child", scopeKey:"cron-exit:<jobId>", replaceExistingScope:true, argv:[shell.command, ...shell.argsFor(command)], cwd?, captureOutput:true }). The shell is platform-aware via resolveExitWatchShell(): cmd.exe /d /s /c on Windows, bash -lc on POSIX.
  • The watcher lives under the gateway supervisor tree, so per-turn CLI teardown never touches it. An async spawn/wait that loses ownership (job cancelled or re-armed for a changed command/cwd) is a no-op via the armToken/slot-identity check.
  • await run.wait() → on exit, the one-shot completion is persisted (the job disabled in the store) BEFORE the job fires, fail-closed: if the store write or run.wait() rejects, the job does NOT fire — so a gateway restart cannot re-arm and double-fire the same exit. Only then does it fire via the existing cron run pipeline; the woken turn sees the exit code + last output lines.
  • Job remove/disable, or a changed command/cwd → reconcile() cancels or re-arms the watcher (cancel(jobId); cancelAll() on shutdown).
• Delivery to the originating conversation is the existing executeMainSessionCronJob path (resolveMainSessionCronDeliveryContext) — already correct on main; no dependency on #83738.

Reuse / no new delivery code

Everything after "process exited" is the current cron run→system-event→delivery pipeline. The only new surface: the schedule kind, its validation, the watcher lifecycle, and the tool/schema plumbing to create such a job.

Out of scope

• PID-watch ({ kind:"on-exit"; pid }) — follow-up.
• Re-arm/repeat on each exit — v1 is one-shot (job disables after firing, like a one-shot at).
• This PR stacks on #83738 and reuses its origin-aware wake as the firing mechanism; it adds only the process-exit trigger (the supervisor watcher).