ClawReverse

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Checkpoint, restore, and branch OpenClaw sessions without throwing away useful progress.

ClawReverse is an OpenClaw native plugin that adds the openclaw reverse command. It helps you work with checkpoints, recover a clean workspace state, and continue from a known-good point instead of rerunning everything from scratch.

Why use ClawReverse?

ClawReverse is designed to solve real-world friction when working with OpenClaw:

• The AI made a mess and got stuck: If OpenClaw generates too many unwanted files or bad code changes and can no longer proceed, you can instantly rewind the workspace to a clean state instead of starting from scratch.
• Save tokens on long-running tasks: If OpenClaw perfectly analyzes a massive codebase but fails during the coding step, you don't have to pay it to read everything again. Just branch from the exact moment the analysis finished.

In practice, it helps you:

• recover control of the workspace quickly
• preserve useful progress
• branch safely for experiments
• reduce repeated work and token usage

Core concepts

Think of the plugin like this:

• checkpoint: a saved historical boundary for a session. It records the workspace snapshot, the closed transcript prefix, and lineage metadata.
• rollback: rewinds the current line to an earlier checkpoint. It does not create a new workspace, agent, or session. By default, the parent workspace is left untouched unless you explicitly request an in-place restore.
• continue: forks from a checkpoint. It requires --prompt and creates a new child agent, a new workspace, and a new session, leaving the parent untouched.

Requirements

• Node.js 24+
• A working OpenClaw installation with a valid openclaw.json with the read and write perssion granted

Install

Prefer the published skill page? See ClawReverse on ClawHub.

If you're starting from GitHub, clone the repo first:

git clone https://github.com/OpenKILab/ClawReverse.git clawreverse
cd clawreverse

Then install it as a linked plugin:

openclaw plugins install -l "$(pwd)"

If you cloned into a folder named ReverseClaw, older OpenClaw builds may warn that the entry hints ReverseClaw instead of clawreverse. Cloning into the lowercase clawreverse directory avoids that path-based mismatch.

The plugin key in openclaw.json is clawreverse, and its CLI base command is openclaw reverse.

Configure

Fastest path:

openclaw reverse setup

Or edit openclaw.json manually:

{
  "plugins": {
    "allow": ["clawreverse"],
    "enabled": true,
    "entries": {
      "clawreverse": {
        "enabled": true,
        "config": {
          "workspaceRoots": ["~/.openclaw/workspace"]
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Other plugin paths default to ~/.openclaw/plugins/clawreverse/.

Verify

After installation or config changes, restart Gateway and verify that the command is available:

openclaw reverse --help

If the command is missing, make sure:

• openclaw.json still passes validation
• clawreverse is in plugins.allow
• the plugin entry is enabled

Find agent id and session id

Before running checkpoints, continue, or rollback, first look up the agent and session you want to operate on.

1) List available agents

openclaw reverse agents

Use the value in the Agent column as your agent id.

2) List sessions for one agent

openclaw reverse sessions --agent <agent-id>

Use the value in the Session column as your session id. The row marked latest is the most recent session for that agent.

Add --json to either command if you want machine-readable output.

Common workflows

1) List available checkpoints

openclaw reverse checkpoints --agent <agent-id> --session <session-id>

Use this to find the checkpoint you want to restore or branch from.

2) Branch safely with continue

openclaw reverse continue \
  --agent <agent-id> \
  --session <session-id> \
  --checkpoint <checkpoint-id> \
  --prompt "Continue from this point with a different approach."

Use continue when you want a clean child branch without changing the parent session.

3) Rewind the current line with rollback

openclaw reverse rollback \
  --agent <agent-id> \
  --session <session-id> \
  --checkpoint <checkpoint-id>

Use rollback when you want to move the current line back to an earlier clean point instead of creating a child branch.

4) Inspect branch lineage with tree

openclaw reverse tree --agent <agent-id> --session <session-id> [--node <checkpoint>]

This helps answer questions such as:

• which checkpoint is the root of the current view
• where a child branch was created
• how many nodes, sessions, and branches are involved

For example, suppose the main session created two checkpoints, then you used continue from ckpt_0002 to try a different fix:

Root: ckpt_0001 [main / 5f29223a-6e53-49f9-9200-63766baa7c2f / node 7]
Resolved by: default
Nodes: 5  Sessions: 2  Branches: 1

ckpt_0001 [main / 5f29223a-6e53-49f9-9200-63766baa7c2f / node 7] write - before tool write summary.txt
\- ckpt_0002 [main / 5f29223a-6e53-49f9-9200-63766baa7c2f / node 8] write - before tool write spark.txt
   |- ckpt_0003 [main / 5f29223a-6e53-49f9-9200-63766baa7c2f / node 9] exec - before tool exec delete summary.txt
   \- ckpt_0004 [main-branch / 91c5d557-f94c-4d27-8d7d-0e0d9b4f7d6b / node 1] write - before tool write alternative_summary.txt via continue
      \- ckpt_0005 [main-branch / 91c5d557-f94c-4d27-8d7d-0e0d9b4f7d6b / node 2] exec - before tool exec move alternative_summary.txt archive/alternative_summary.txt

You can read this tree like this:

• ckpt_0001 is the root selected for the current view
• ckpt_0002 -> ckpt_0003 is the original main line
• ckpt_0004 starts a child branch from ckpt_0002, and via continue shows why that edge exists
• the child branch has its own session id, so you can quickly tell the parent and child lines apart

If you only want to inspect one subtree, pass the branch point explicitly:

openclaw reverse tree --node ckpt_0002

Troubleshooting

openclaw reverse is not available

• Restart Gateway after installing the plugin or editing openclaw.json.
• Check that clawreverse is listed in plugins.allow.
• Check that the plugin entry is enabled and the config still passes validation.

Test

From the repository root:

npm test

Roadmap

• PoC of checkpoint snapshots
• Continue tasks with a newly created agent
• Package it as an OpenClaw skill
• Integrate sandbox support

Citation

@software{clawreverse2026,
  author       = {Bin Huang, Xuhong Wang, Yingchun Wang, Chaochao Lu, Xia Hu},
  title        = {ClawReverse},
  year         = {2026},
  version      = {0.1.0},
  organization = {Shanghai AI Laboratory},
  url          = {https://github.com/OpenKILab/ClawReverse}
}

Contact

If you have questions or would like to collaborate, please contact us at:

• Bin Huang，Shanghai AI Laboratory，huangbin@pjlab.org.cn
• Xuhong Wang ，Shanghai AI Laboratory，wangxuhong@pjlab.org.cn