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A runtime is the engine that actually runs an agent. Clawboo supports five: openclaw, clawboo-native, claude-code, codex, and hermes, and drives each one through a single RuntimeAdapter interface. That uniformity is the point: a team can mix runtimes freely, and the orchestrator drives every one of them off the same normalized RuntimeEvent stream. A specialist running on Claude Code, a leader running on clawboo-native, and an agent on the OpenClaw Gateway all coordinate through the same board, memory, and team chat. This page introduces the five runtimes, the three runtime classes that determine how the host integrates each one, and the full capability matrix, built directly from each adapter’s capabilities() and the runtime descriptor.

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The five runtimes

The four non-OpenClaw runtimes (clawboo-native, claude-code, codex, hermes) are declared in a single descriptor and reachable through /api/runtimes. OpenClaw is the fifth, handled separately because it is a connected substrate (see runtime classes), not a CLI/SDK Clawboo spawns and not a member of the /api/runtimes id set. Its lifecycle (Gateway install, device pairing, channels) lives on its own page.
Each adapter declares participantKind: 'agent'. 'human' is a reserved seam in the trait so a person could later be a first-class task assignee or delegation target behind the same interface; nothing branches on it in v0.3.1.

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Runtime classes

Every runtime declares a runtimeClass that says how it composes with the host. The host routes a runtime to the right integration depth by construction: a pure function reads the runtime’s declared capabilities and never branches on a runtime id. This is the shared plane vs private plane boundary made mechanical.
  • wrapped-oneshot: a per-run spawned worker. Clawboo installs the CLI (or, for clawboo-native, ships it inside the server), spawns it for one task, drains its events, and tears it down. claude-code, codex, and hermes are wrapped one-shots. A wrapped one-shot may still accrue durable state if it claims a persistent per-identity home (Hermes and Codex do).
  • connected-substrate: a long-lived runtime the host drives over its existing live connection, rather than spawning. openclaw is the only connected substrate: runs ride the live Gateway session over the adapter’s long-lived client. The server-side executor runner refuses a connected substrate before it claims a board task: POST /api/runtimes/:id/run would return 422 connected_substrate, because OpenClaw work is dispatched through the live Gateway path, not the one-shot runner. (And openclaw is not a /api/runtimes id, so that route 404s it first.)
  • native: a host-native participant. clawboo-native is the only one: Clawboo is this runtime’s substrate, so its private plane (persisted conversation transcripts) lives in a stable per-identity home the host materializes.
resolveRuntimeIntegration turns these claims into a plan with three home kinds: persistent (a per-identity dir that outlives the run), ephemeral (a throwaway per-run dir), or connected (no host-managed home; the substrate owns its own state entirely). The preserveSkills / preserveMemory flags are clamped to a persistent home; a runtime that claims preserve but only gets an ephemeral home degrades to the safe default rather than producing a contradictory plan. coRunScheduler is always false: the host’s scheduler owns when-to-run, so a runtime’s own cron (nativeScheduler) is informational and can never co-run for teammate dispatch.

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The capability matrix

Each adapter answers capabilities() with a fixed shape. The fields below come straight from each capabilities() body and the runtime descriptor.

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Execution capabilities

streaming: false on Hermes is a permanent asymmetry, not a missing feature: Hermes has no native token stream, so the host derives its lifecycle from the structured output instead. mcp: false and worktrees: false on OpenClaw reflect that OpenClaw agents run in Gateway-owned workspaces under OpenClaw’s own sandbox; Clawboo never retargets a live OpenClaw agent’s cwd, and OpenClaw attaches Clawboo’s MCP servers through the Gateway config rather than the adapter. contextWindowTokens drives the proactive session-rotation watermark; when it is omitted (or 0), rotation fires only on an explicit max_turns signal.

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Native-preservation seam

These claims tell the host which native powers each runtime carries, so it can decide what to materialize and what to preserve across runs. How those claims resolve through resolveRuntimeIntegration:
  • clawboo-native: home: persistent (per-identity), preserveMemory: true. Clawboo materializes a stable per-identity home and its persisted conversation transcripts survive and resume across dispatches. No native skills dir (capabilities ride the shared tools broker), no channels (the shared spine is its only voice).
  • openclaw: home: connected. The Gateway owns its own state dir entirely, so the host provisions and preserves nothing; preserveSkills/preserveMemory resolve to false because there is nothing host-managed to keep. useGatewayChannels is true (nativeChannels: 'gateway'); OpenClaw’s own channels and cron are runtime-native and the host never serves or co-runs them.
  • claude-code: home: ephemeral. A stateless wrapped one-shot: the cognition is the model, no durable cross-run substrate exists to preserve. nativeHome is omitted, so the SDK runs against the user’s real HOME / Keychain auth.
  • codex: home: persistent (per-identity). The host materializes a managed per-agent CODEX_HOME, so Codex sessions survive across runs and codex exec resume gives a Codex leader real conversation continuity. The preserve flags stay false (no native skills/memory substrate); the durable state is the session files plus a seeded copy of the user’s ~/.codex/auth.json (parse-validated, freshness-checked, never written back; see Codex).
  • hermes: home: persistent (per-identity), preserveSkills: true, preserveMemory: true. The Hermes self-improvement loop compounds in one stable home per identity: self-created skills, MEMORY.md, and state.db accrue across runs.

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Models

An empty models array does not mean “no models”; it means the list is owned elsewhere (the Gateway config for OpenClaw, Hermes’s own provider config for Hermes).

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How a runtime is wired

Each non-OpenClaw runtime is a pure RuntimeAdapter constructed with a per-run driver factory: the adapter wraps a black-box runtime and the factory supplies the real driver (the Claude Agent SDK, codex exec, the hermes CLI, or the in-process native harness). The adapters live in dependency-light packages that import only @clawboo/executor; the real subprocess/SDK drivers live server-side so the browser bundle never sees them. All five adapters are always available; actual usability depends on install and credential state at run time, not on a flag. Health for the CLI runtimes is “the binary resolves”, checked via resolveRuntimeBin, which probes PATH and the well-known user-install dirs (so a Hermes binary in the Python user-site bin reads healthy even though that dir is usually off the server’s PATH). Native health is “any routable provider key (or OLLAMA_BASE_URL) resolves”, no binary, no network call.

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Boundaries and non-goals

  • OpenClaw is not a /api/runtimes runtime. It is a connected substrate driven over the Gateway. Its routes 404 on the runtimes API and it is refused by the one-shot runner. Manage it through the system API, not the runtimes API.
  • Clawboo does not reimplement runtime loops. Each adapter wraps the runtime as a black box and normalizes its native signals into RuntimeEvents. Clawboo supervises, relays, and coordinates on the shared plane; it does not own the runtime’s inner turn loop.
  • nativeScheduler never co-runs. A runtime can ship its own cron, but the host’s scheduler always owns when-to-run for teammate dispatch. The claim is informational only.
  • No conversion between runtimes. A runtime’s agents are not migrated, exported, or “collapsed into native.” The runtimes are co-equal peers.
These docs describe Clawboo v0.3.1, the current release.

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See also

Last modified on August 6, 2026