Personal Agent Network

Design patterns for personal agents coordinating like executive assistants—delegation manifests, relationship handshakes, commitment tiers, trust, and OpenClaw ACP mapping.

Personal Agent Network (EA-style A2A)

Security & scope (read first)

This skill is documentation and design patterns only. It does not require installing binaries, credentials, or writing to disk.

• Agents must not run shell commands, clawhub, or file paths on behalf of the user unless the user explicitly asks and your deployment allows exec.
• Humans who maintain this skill publish updates using the ClawHub CLI in their own terminal; that is outside normal agent tool use.

Use this skill when the user wants two personal agents (or a personal agent and another principal’s agent) to work together like executive assistants: scoped authority, explicit preferences, gradual trust—not generic “agent marketplace” APIs.

Mental model

• Principal = the human. Agent = software acting under delegated authority, not a faceless API.
• Discovery is not “find any LLM”—it is find an agent whose principal has authorized the right delegation for this relationship.
• Relationship before negotiation: agents introduce purpose, exchange delegation manifests, and humans approve asymmetries before routine coordination.

Core artifacts

1. Delegation manifest (machine-readable, human-signed intent)

A structured document the principal (or their OpenClaw identity) stands behind. Other agents use it to know what commitments are allowed without guessing from chat.

Minimum useful fields (extend as JSON or JSON-LD):

• principal_id — stable id for the human (email, did, or OpenClaw identity ref).
• agent_id — this agent instance (e.g. OpenClaw agentId).
• scopes — what the agent may do alone (e.g. calendar:rw, email:read_draft, commit_financial:never).
• limits — numeric/time (e.g. max_meeting_minutes, max_commit_usd, quiet_hours).
• escalation — when to surface the human (family, legal, money, first contact, etc.).
• version + signed_at — for revocation and updates.

2. Relationship contract (pairwise)

After introduction and manifest exchange, store a bilateral agreement:

• Parties (two principals / agents).
• Purpose (e.g. “scheduling for project X”).
• Mutual constraints (hours, channels, max meeting length, cancellation rules).
• Revocation — either principal can end it.

Keep it as a small file or ledger entry both sides mirror.

3. Commitment tiers

When one agent speaks to another, classify the utterance:

Tier	Meaning	Typical requirement
T1 Informational	Facts, availability hints	Manifest present
T2 Tentative	“I can try to hold…”	Scope allows
T3 Firm	“We agree on 3pm”	Within limits + relationship active
T4 Binding	Money/legal/vendor	Explicit human approval on this action

Never present T3/T4 language if the manifest forbids it.

4. Trust / reputation (lightweight)

Optional signed log of kept vs broken commitments (not necessarily blockchain). Use it to start conservative with new relationships and relax caps as history builds.

Protocol interoperability

When stacks differ (OpenClaw vs other frameworks):

1. Advertise supported profiles (e.g. “OpenClaw ACP + JSON manifest exchange”).
2. Negotiate a shared outer format (JSON message + manifest attachments).
3. Prefer a thin lingua franca over forcing one stack’s internals.

OpenClaw-native mapping (conceptual):

• Identity / gateway auth → root trust for this agent.
• sessions_send, sessions_spawn, session logs → coordination and audit primitives.
• New product work might add: manifest types, relationship records, commitment events.

Semantic “capabilities” for personal agents

Avoid vague labels (“legal help”). Prefer task-shaped descriptions the principal approved:

• Jurisdiction, deliverable type, SLA, volume, escalation path.

Match delegated scope + relationship purpose, not raw model benchmarks.

Escalation hierarchy (always explicit)

1. Human — final authority; sensitive or out-of-scope.
2. Agent — routine, in-manifest, known relationship.
3. Reject / clarify — ambiguous capability, missing trust, or scope mismatch.

When to load this skill

• User asks about agent-to-agent, two personal assistants, delegation, trust between agents, or listing a skill on ClawHub for this domain (answer conceptually; do not run clawhub unless the user requests a terminal command and policy allows it).
• User wants to design manifests, handshakes, or commitment tiers—not only marketplace listings.

Publishing & registry (humans only)

To publish or update this skill on ClawHub, use the ClawHub CLI on your machine (install, clawhub login, then clawhub publish with a new semver when content changes). See the official ClawHub documentation at clawhub.com for the current publish syntax and flags—do not rely on copy-pasted shell snippets inside this file.

References

• OpenClaw Skills: OpenClaw docs (search for “Skills”).
• ClawHub registry: clawhub.com.