clawpatch

This skill is specifically for the Clawpatch CLI (openclaw/clawpatch, https://clawpatch.ai) — an npm-installed automated code-review and per-finding fix tool. Use it ONLY when Clawpatch itself is in play: the user says "review with clawpatch", "run clawpatch", "clawpatch fix", "find bugs with clawpatch", "clawpatch report/findings", "clawpatch open-pr", wants to dispatch subagents to fix Clawpatch findings in parallel, or otherwise names Clawpatch or one of its commands. Do NOT use it for generic "review this code", "find bugs", or "code review" requests that don't involve Clawpatch — those belong to a different tool.

Clawpatch — agent workflow

Clawpatch (openclaw/clawpatch, https://clawpatch.ai) is an agent-driven CLI: it reviews a repo into structured findings and can apply validated per-finding fixes. It needs Node.js 22+ and a provider CLI (codex by default); fix refuses dirty source worktrees by default, while review/ci/revalidate can include dirty code when explicitly scoped.

This skill is judgment + orchestration, not a CLI reference. For exact flags, JSON fields, and exit codes, trust clawpatch <cmd> --help and the live --json output over anything written here — Clawpatch is pre-1.0 and its surface drifts, so a written copy will mislead. What this skill carries is what --help can't tell you: when to reach for it, how to fix findings in parallel, and the traps.

When to use

Use Clawpatch when the user names it, or wants whole-repo automated review that yields locatable findings plus optional validated fixes.

Don't use it for: a small diff already under review (a whole-repo review cycle is overkill — use a diff-review tool); a bug the user already understands and just wants written; or when no provider CLI (codex/claude/cursor/grok/ opencode/pi/acpx, or mock for tests) is installed — clawpatch doctor fails fast, so say so and stop.

Setup

clawpatch doctor verifies the install and the provider. The published CLI requires Node.js 22+. If clawpatch is missing, install the current published package (npm install -g clawpatch@0.7.2). The provider (codex by default) is the user's to install and authenticate — don't run login flows on their behalf.

Gitignore .clawpatch/ early to keep status, commits, and PR diffs clean. Clawpatch allows its own state directory to change during runs; fix's dirty guard is for source worktree changes, not .clawpatch/ churn. Add the single line .clawpatch/ before review/fix when the repo doesn't already ignore it, but remember .gitignore is tracked — confirm with the user before editing it.

Review → findings

The pipeline is init → map → review → report. init and heuristic map are local and cheap; review is the expensive step (~30–60s per feature with codex) and runs with a bounded worker pool by default.

For a first whole-repo pass, clawpatch ci runs that pipeline in one call and writes the same .clawpatch/ findings the staged steps would — so "ci → pick a fix path" is a fine default. Drop to the staged commands only when you need to sample before sweeping a large or paid provider (review --limit 3, below), scope to a slice (review --since <ref>), or resume an existing review as code moves (revalidate / review --since, below). Either way ci stops at findings — it never fixes or opens PRs; fixing stays the paths under "Choose how to fix."

Run init && map directly — they're idempotent and non-destructive, so an existing .clawpatch/ just gets refreshed (init no-ops without --force; heuristic map re-classifies). No scan, no --force. map writes one JSON file per feature — the subsystem-sized unit (a package, a command, a service) that both review and scoping operate on — into .clawpatch/features/. If deterministic mapping is too shallow, clawpatch map --source auto can add read-only provider-assisted slices; use --source agent only when you deliberately want provider mapping even if heuristics found enough.

State persists in .clawpatch/ and there's no natural point where the agent deletes it, so findings — and their fixed/wont-fix/uncertain statuses — carry across runs. That persistence is intentional: Clawpatch owns resume and freshness, so use its commands instead of hand-managing or wiping findings. When code has moved since the last review:

• clawpatch revalidate --since <ref> (or --all) re-checks existing findings against the current code and updates their statuses — this is the CLI's de-stale mechanism.
• clawpatch review --since <ref> reviews only the features changed since <ref>, including changed features regardless of previous review status, without a full re-review.

Prefer those over trusting stale statuses or wiping. Wiping ([ -d .clawpatch ] && rm -r .clawpatch — guarded, never rm -rf) is a last resort for genuinely corrupt state, not the freshness tool — it discards resume context and costs a full re-review. (There's no --resume flag; "resume" just means the on-disk state is still there.) Use clawpatch triage --finding <id> --status <status> --note <text> to mark false positives or decisions; it preserves the finding and appends history instead of rewriting JSON by hand.

On a large or unfamiliar repo, smoke-test first (review --limit 3) and treat that as often-sufficient — surface the time/cost before committing to a full sweep (ci or review). For cost control on broader runs, --jobs defaults to roughly half the CPU cores (max 10); lower it or use --rate-limit-per-minute / CLAWPATCH_RPM when provider spend or quotas matter.

By default review sees only committed code; --include-dirty (on review, ci, and revalidate) pulls uncommitted worktree changes into scope — reach for it to review in-progress work before it's committed. It's a review-scope switch, not a fix dirty-tree override (Safety).

Use clawpatch review --mode deslopify when the user wants slop, maintainability, or performance cleanup. Keep default review mode for ordinary bug, security, API-contract, data-loss, and release-risk review.

Scoping the review

The switches above scope which code review sees; this scopes which features it spends on. review has no path filter — you scope it by selecting features. Each .clawpatch/features/*.json carries an opaque featureId (a hash like feat_library_…, not a 1..N index — passing a number silently matches nothing and the run reviews zero features) plus its title and ownedFiles[].path. To review only what the user named ("just the Go code", "only the auth package", "ignore the docs"), translate paths → ids yourself, then pass them. For more than a one-off id, prefer --feature-list: it reads one feature id per line, keeps first-seen order, and de-duplicates:

text

for f in .clawpatch/features/*.json; do
  jq -r '[.featureId,.title,((.ownedFiles//[])|map(.path)|join(","))]|@tsv' "$f"
done                                   # read the table, pick ids, then:
printf '%s\n' <id> <id> > /tmp/clawpatch-features.txt
clawpatch review --feature-list /tmp/clawpatch-features.txt

Repeated --feature <id> still works for short ad hoc selections. Confirm mutual exclusions in clawpatch review --help before mixing feature selection with --since, --project, or dirty-worktree scoping.

--limit <n> is the cheapness knob (first N features in map order) — right for a smoke test, useless for targeting an area; reach for --feature when the user names a subsystem. All Clawpatch state (features, findings, reports) is plain JSON under .clawpatch/, so read it directly when a --json payload is too large to scan or a wrapper truncates it.

Read findings from report --json. The full flag set is clawpatch report --help; two non-obvious traps it won't flag for you:

• --json writes the JSON to stdout; --output writes Markdown. Capture JSON by redirecting stdout (> findings.json), not --output.
• In 0.7.2 the shape is { "findings": <count>, "total": <count>, "output": <path|null>, "items": [ … ], "results": [ … ] }. findings is a deprecated count, not the array; read .items[] (.results[] is an alias). Field names still drift from prose docs (the id is id; evidence uses path/startLine/endLine). Probe before parsing: jq 'keys, .items[0]' findings.json.

Each finding already carries fix-ready prose — title, reasoning, reproduction, recommendation, suggestedRegressionTest, minimumFixScope — ready to drop into a fix prompt or PR body. Ignore the next: hint Clawpatch prints; rank findings yourself (severity → confidence → triage), and never auto-fix without the user's pick (providers emit false positives).

Choose how to fix: scanner-only vs full-cycle

Scanner-only (default, and the only safe parallel path). Use Clawpatch purely as the reviewer; the host agent fixes findings with its own tooling. Required when the user wants fixes in parallel, the repo has strict commit/PR conventions, you want control over each patch, or the host model beats the provider's.

Full-cycle. Let clawpatch fix produce and validate the patch. Fine for single-developer, sequential work in a low-ceremony repo where you trust the provider and want its format/typecheck/lint/test gate.

The two are mutually exclusive — never run clawpatch fix from dispatched subagents (see Safety).

Scanner-only dispatch

1. init → map → review, then report --json > /tmp/findings.json, in a throwaway worktree.
2. Pick findings to fan out; prefer ones whose minimumFixScope/evidence paths don't overlap, so subagents can't collide.
3. Per finding: extract its JSON (jq '.items[] | select(.id==$id)') and dispatch a subagent in a fresh worktree branched from main (not the review worktree). Paste the finding JSON inline in its prompt.
4. The subagent fixes with the host's normal edit/test/commit/PR tooling and never calls clawpatch. Tell it to confirm the finding is real before changing anything (false positives) and to stay within minimumFixScope (no over-correcting).
5. The review worktree and its .clawpatch/ are disposable — discard after. Don't reconcile fixed-status back into .clawpatch/; the audit trail is git (PRs, commit trailers).

Full-cycle

On a clean worktree, clawpatch fix --finding <id>. On success the finding goes to uncertain, not fixed — confirm with clawpatch revalidate --finding <id>. Then ship with clawpatch open-pr --patch <patchAttemptId> --draft (Clawpatch writes a finding-rich PR body) or hand the diff to your own commit/PR flow. Check flags with clawpatch fix --help. fix has no dirty-tree --force; clean or stash source changes first, or use --dry-run only for a preview. Never run two fixes in parallel on one .clawpatch/ (feature locks serialize them; interleaved patches don't merge). Stop and report on the first surprise: validation failure (exit 6 → git restore .), an oversized diff, or repeated wont-fix.

Safety & pitfalls

• Never clawpatch open-pr --force without explicit user approval — it overrides the failed-validation guard. fix has no --force; keep the clean source-worktree preflight intact. Clawpatch does not merge/land PRs today (there's no land command); if a merge/land command ever appears, treat it the same way — never run it without approval.
• Never combine subagents with clawpatch fix. Sharing .clawpatch/ across subagents risks patches landing in the wrong worktree (evidence paths resolve against the original rootPath); copying state per subagent is fragile. Pick one mode and stay in it.
• Don't blind-retry a non-zero exit. Codes are typed (3 = dirty tree, 4 = provider auth, 6 = validation failed, 7 = lock). On lock failures, try clawpatch clean-locks --stale-only first; use unfiltered clean-locks only after confirming no local or remote review process is active. clawpatch --help / the spec has the full set.
• Treat this doc as fallible. Verify any flag, field, or exit-code detail against clawpatch <cmd> --help and live --json output — they're the source of truth; this skill is the workflow around them.