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Recall

Recall is the operator’s hand on the system — the CLI for direct intervention when automated systems are insufficient or you need immediate control over a running agent fleet.

The Three Control Surfaces

Recall completes the operator control plane alongside two existing commands:

The Three Operator Primitives

These three commands cover every coordination scenario: stall is the dominant operator command in real production. Most incidents are coordination failures, not catastrophic failures. Stop the agent, investigate, then decide: recall wake (minor) or recall stun (broken).

Full Command Reference

System Commands

Agent State

Recovery

What Stun Actually Does

recall stun is not just a stop command. It runs a 7-step sequence:
  1. Disconnect channel connections
  2. Drain in-progress tool calls (max 10 seconds)
  3. Kill all sub-agents
  4. Archive the active session
  5. Compact memory
  6. Emit a control plane event (visible in openclaw watch)
  7. Hold — agent offline until recall recover + operator confirmation
Why step 4 matters: A gateway restart doesn’t fix a runaway agent. The bad state lives in the active session, active sub-agents, and memory files. Stun targets all three. Gateway restart misses all three.

Standard Incident Response

Reversibility

Every operation has a reversal: Session context is not restored after stun — by design. If the session caused the problem, restoring it restores the problem.

Observability

Every Recall operation emits a structured event that flows into the reliability stack:
  • Visible in openclaw watch incident timeline
  • Ingested by RadCheck signal analysis
  • Available in OCTriage proof bundles
  • Read by Agent911 during incident diagnosis

Agent911

Recall calls Agent911 primitives. They share the same execution layer.

Triage

Run triage before stun to capture a proof bundle at the moment of intervention.