Claw Orchestrator: A Unified Runtime for Coding Agent CLIs

📦 npm • 📖 Documentation • 🎬 Demo film • 📝 Changelog • 📚 Citation

Claw Orchestrator runs Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity, Grok Build, OpenCode and any Agent Client Protocol agent (Kimi Code, dsh) as persistent sessions behind one API. A run counts as done only when checks the agent did not write pass: you declare the checks, the runtime runs them and reads the exit codes, and the evidence stays on disk. Runs are checkpointed workflows that survive a crash, and every turn on every engine is recorded with its model, tokens and cost.

_{One bug, one acceptance contract, five engines, three runs each, first attempt only. The runtime ran the checks itself: 9 verified, 4 refuted, 2 errored (Grok Build hit its free-tier usage limit). One task, not a benchmark. How the film was made, and how to re-run it.}

News

• [2026-10] v7.16.0: clawo goal --engine claude runs a goal on Claude Code's /goal, with the same checkpointing, resume and verification as a Codex goal.
• [2026-10] ResearchBoost-Agent, an autonomous agent that profiles, optimizes and validates AI training code, now runs its goal mode on Claw Orchestrator.
• [2026-10] v7.14.0: any Agent Client Protocol agent runs as a session (engine: 'acp'), with presets for Kimi Code and dsh.
• [2026-10] v7.13.0: clawo goal keeps a Codex /goal running for hours on one thread, reattaches it after a crash, and judges the result with your checks.
• [2026-09] Declare, Compile, Look, built on Claw Orchestrator, was presented as a talk at the ECCV 2026 Workshop on Multimodal Digital Agents.
• [2026-08] v6.0.0: the durable run kernel and the verification plane. A run survives its own process dying, and a run with an acceptance contract is judged by the runtime, not by the agent.

Highlights

• ✅ Verdicts the agent cannot write: acceptance contracts (commands, HTTP probes, screenshots, diff policy, file assertions) run by the runtime. A run ends verified, refuted or unverified, and editing the tests its contract runs refutes it (guide).
• 🔀 Many vendors, one API: Claude Code, Codex, Antigravity, Grok Build, OpenCode, any ACP agent and custom CLIs. clawo fanout asks several at once; session_handoff moves a live conversation to another engine in the same workspace (guide).
• 💾 Survives a crash: every state transition is checkpointed; resume, retry, timeout, cancel and steer come from the kernel (guide).
• 🎯 Long goals: clawo goal runs a Codex /goal unattended on one thread, resumes it after usage limits within a bound, optionally inside your own sandbox (guide).
• 💰 Known cost: one per-turn ledger across engines (clawo runs) and a maxBudgetUsd cap the runtime enforces on every engine (guide).
• 🔌 Fits your tools: a CLI, an MCP server, an ACP agent for editors, an OpenAI-compatible endpoint, a TypeScript SDK and an OpenClaw plugin (ways to run).

claude-squad, Conductor and Vibe Kanban are interfaces for running agents side by side in worktrees; Claude Code subagents and Codex's parallel attempts stay within one vendor. Claw Orchestrator is a headless runtime underneath: several vendors behind one API, durable workflows, and a verification step the agents cannot edit. They can be used together.

Quick Start

Requires Node 22+ and at least one engine CLI installed and logged in (claude, codex, agy, grok or opencode).

npm install -g @enderfga/claw-orchestrator
clawo serve &    # local runtime + dashboard on 127.0.0.1:18796

clawo solve "The test fails. Fix price.js." --engine codex \
  --check "npm test" --check "node ../holdout/price.spec.mjs" --wait
clawo verify <runId>    # each check, why it failed, the files that changed
clawo runs --since 1h   # every turn on every engine: model, tokens, cost, verdict

clawo fanout "How would you speed up this test suite?" --engines claude,codex,grok --synthesize --wait
clawo goal --objective-file GOAL.md --check "npm run bench:check" --check-timeout 120 --wait

The server writes an access token to ~/.openclaw/server-token and the CLI reads it from there. To sign in the browser once, open http://127.0.0.1:18796/login?token=<token>&redirect=/dash.

• 🧪 Acceptance contracts and evidence bundles (guide)
• 🔁 Workflows, resume and the goal node (guide)
• 🖥️ Every CLI command (guide)
• 🧰 All 78 tools (guide)

Ways to run

import { SessionManager } from '@enderfga/claw-orchestrator';

const manager = new SessionManager();
await manager.startSession({ name: 'fix-tests', engine: 'claude', cwd: '/project' });
const result = await manager.sendMessage('fix-tests', 'Fix the failing tests');

From an MCP host, ask for workflow_start with template solve, a task, and a contract such as {"checks":[{"type":"command","cmd":"npm","args":["test"]}]}. In an ACP editor, the model selector is grouped by engine, so one dropdown switches between Claude, Codex, Antigravity and Grok models mid-session.

Engine compatibility

An agent that serves the Agent Client Protocol on stdio runs as engine: 'acp'; any other coding CLI that runs as a subprocess can be wired up as a custom engine.

All features

Built on Claw Orchestrator

• ResearchBoost-Agent: an autonomous agent that profiles, optimizes and validates AI training code; its long goal-mode runs use clawo goal (blog).
• Declare, Compile, Look: coordinate-free layout generation with vision-in-the-loop repair, ECCV 2026 Workshop on Multimodal Digital Agents (talk).

Using Claw Orchestrator in a project or paper? Open a pull request to add it here.

Citation

If Claw Orchestrator helps your research, please cite it:

@misc{fang2026claworchestrator,
  title        = {Claw Orchestrator: A Unified Runtime for Coding Agent CLIs},
  author       = {Fang, Guian},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/Enderfga/claw-orchestrator}}
}

Research built on Claw Orchestrator:

@misc{researchboost2026infra,
  author = {{ResearchBoost Team}},
  title  = {{ResearchBoost}: {RSI} starts with Infra},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://ydove0324.github.io/hx_resume/blog/researchboost/}
}

@inproceedings{fang2026declare,
  title     = {Declare, Compile, Look: Coordinate-Free Layout Generation with Vision-in-the-Loop Repair},
  author    = {Fang, Guian and Liu, Mengsha and Shou, Mike Zheng},
  booktitle = {ECCV 2026 Multimodal Digital Agents Workshop},
  year      = {2026},
  url       = {https://openreview.net/forum?id=Romd50Ce0w}
}

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Run npm run build && npm run lint && npm run format:check && npm run test before submitting.

License

MIT, see LICENSE.