Game of Cards — OpenClaw Plugin

Game of Cards (GoC) is an agile work-card methodology for AI-agent collaborators. This plugin delivers the full GoC skill, tool, and hook set to OpenClaw in a single install. The goc engine is bundled inside the npm payload — the only host prerequisite is python3 (3.10+).

Status: scaffolded against upstream OpenClaw plugin SDK v2026.3.x. The index.ts entry registers a goc tool + three lifecycle hooks. A few hook-context API shapes (ctx.projectDir, ctx.notify, ctx.appendSystemContext, ctx.toolCalls) are flagged as TODO(verify-context-shape) because they are not explicitly documented at https://docs.openclaw.ai/plugins/hooks.md; confirm against the actual SDK types during integration.

What's included

1 tool — registered programmatically, model-invokable:

Tool	Purpose
goc	Files, advances, decides on, or closes cards in .game-of-cards/deck/. Wraps every goc CLI verb behind one typed function call: verb, args[], optional flags, optional cwd.

14 skills at workspace tier — model reads them as injected system context:

Skill	Purpose
kickoff	Onboarding dialog — introduces GoC, scaffolds .game-of-cards/
deck	Methodology front door
scan-deck	Browse the board: triage view, filtered queues, decision Q&A
next-card	Pick the highest-leverage open card to work on next
create-card	File a new card with frontmatter + DoD scaffold
advance-card	Flip a card's status (open → active → blocked …)
finish-card	Close a card with DoD enforcement + commit
decide-card	Record a decision and lower a human gate
pull-card	Autonomous round: claim → work → close → commit
refine-deck	Hygiene pass — retag stale, prune old parks
audit-deck	Hunt for one undocumented defect or gap
standup	Active cards, blockers, closures since yesterday, decision gates
retrospective	Cluster closed cards by tag, surface recurring failure modes
card-schema	Field reference — enums, canonical tags, DoD format

3 lifecycle hooks — fire automatically:

Event	Hook	Purpose
session_start	active-card reminder	Prints active cards at session boot; silent when none
before_prompt_build	deck-first reminder	Detects work-initiating prompts; appends a deck-first reminder to system context
agent_end	pattern-generalization	After code-mutating turns, prompts the model to consider filing a generalization card

Install

Once published to ClawHub:

openclaw skills install game-of-cards

The plugin is also published on npm as game-of-cards.

Prerequisite

python3 (3.10+) on PATH. The plugin invokes the bundled engine via python3 -m goc.cli from the tool handler — no uv, no pipx, no separate pipx install game-of-cards step.

Known limitations

Subagents do not see the goc tool (OpenClaw ≤ 2026.5.6)

Spawned subagents cannot call the goc tool even when explicitly listed in tools.subagents.tools.alsoAllow. The plugin loads, the runtime registry shows the tool (openclaw plugins inspect game-of-cards --runtime --json reports toolNames: ["goc"]), and main sessions can call goc — but spawned subagents report goc tool not available.

This is an upstream OpenClaw bug: the plugin tool allowlist for subagents reads policy.allow but does not include policy.alsoAllow. Tracked at:

• https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/issues/23359 — closed in 2026-02 as completed, but the alsoAllow projection bug surfaced in this report still ships in 2026.5.6.
• https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/pull/51388 — proposed upstream fix; open as of 2026-05-10.

Workaround: until OpenClaw includes the upstream fix, prefer documenting the limitation rather than restricting subagents' toolset. Setting tools.subagents.tools.allow: ["goc", ...] is a final allow-only filter that can accidentally remove standard subagent tools — only use it as a temporary workaround in narrow smoke environments where you control the full subagent toolset.

After OpenClaw releases the fix, subagents will see plugin tools through the documented alsoAllow path with no plugin-side change.

How GoC fits OpenClaw

OpenClaw's plugin architecture is a strong match for the deck pattern:

• Tool registration is the OpenClaw-native way to expose a programmatic capability. The goc tool is a typed function ({ verb, args, flags, cwd }) that the model can call as it would any other tool — same surface as exec, browser, web_search.
• Workspace-tier skills mean GoC activates automatically when the user's active workspace contains a deck, and silently otherwise.
• Lifecycle hooks fire programmatically via api.on() — no hooks.json config to maintain, no shell-out to Python scripts, just TypeScript functions in the plugin entry.

Source of truth

This plugin is generated from the top-level goc/ package and the goc/templates/skills/ directory at the root of zauberzeug/game-of-cards. The bundled engine under openclaw-plugin/goc/ is byte-for-byte synced from goc/ by scripts/sync_plugin_assets.py (run by the project's pre-commit hook). The skills under openclaw-plugin/skills/ are hand-ported from goc/templates/skills/ with invocation-neutral edits — they read sensibly under both registered-tool (OpenClaw) and Bash + PATH (Claude Code) primitives.

To contribute, edit the source-of-truth files:

Source	Mirrors to
goc/ (Python engine)	openclaw-plugin/goc/ (auto-synced)
goc/templates/skills/<name>/SKILL.md	openclaw-plugin/skills/<name>/SKILL.md (hand-ported)
goc/templates/hooks/*.py	openclaw-plugin/index.ts (TypeScript ports)

License

MIT — see the repository root for the full text.