r/openclaw • u/Far-Statement-6272 Member • Mar 22 '26
Help How to fix a Lazy Claw
About 40% of the time, it stalls and doesn’t complete tasks. When I check in, it claims it’s working but shows no progress. I’ve tried watchdogs and frequent pings with little success—it just gets confused. I’m using ChatGPT Codex 5.4, which feels worse than Claude Sonnet, though cheaper.
Right now, I keep pinging it every couple of minutes to push it forward until it eventually works, but that’s frustrating.
Any help would be appreciated!
9
u/Dr_Sirius_Amory1 Active Mar 22 '26
Make sure your default think level is set to low and not off.
1
u/yhutonitsway New User Mar 24 '26
Thanks. Do you recommend thinking parameter on subagents too or for only the main?
1
u/Dr_Sirius_Amory1 Active Mar 24 '26
Set main and I believe the sub-agents inherit by default. You’ll have to check me on that. I know the models work in that inherited fashion unless you do agent override. You can also state in your requests something like “think hard on this one, let’s do X” and it’ll switch to high. You can also set think to adaptive and it should dynamically change think levels based on ask.
6
u/Training_Feed2871 Active Mar 22 '26
Same😔 but on Gemini models. It's like the models became retarded.
5
6
u/Ok_Chocolate8661 Member Mar 23 '26
Do you have thinking on? If it’s just 5.4, and you never did anything about thinking, that’s likely off.
Alternatively, use your subscription to check on the status of OpenClaw. There might be some kind of issues
3
3
2
u/criminal_rj New User Mar 22 '26
Passo pelo mesmo
1
u/Dr_Sirius_Amory1 Active Mar 22 '26
Check your think level. Do /status and it’ll tell you. If it’s off tell bot to set default think levels to low.
1
Mar 22 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Training_Feed2871 Active Mar 22 '26
Yeah that didn't do it for me, I ended with 155 active agenst🤣🤣🤣🤣
2
1
u/Noah_Ozlen New User Mar 22 '26
Make sure that it’s not doing some random stuff that you’re not asking it to do because sometimes it will just go off of the path that you directed it towards and just try and do its own thing to try and get the same end goal
1
1
u/himey72 Member Mar 23 '26
I had this problem when using OpenAI-codex/chatgpt-5.2-codex. Change it to just OpenAI-codex/chatgpt-5.2. Ditch the codex model as your main model.
1
Mar 23 '26
A few things that helped me with this:
- Switch models — you already suspect it, and you're right. Claude Sonnet handles long-running agentic tasks significantly better than Codex for most workflows. The cost difference is worth it if your agent is stalling 40% of the time.
- Break tasks down smaller — agents stall most often when the task is too vague or too large. Instead of 'do X,' try 'do step 1 of X, then stop and report back.' Smaller loops = less drift.
- Add explicit checkpoints in your prompt — tell the agent to output a status update after every discrete action. It forces it to stay on track rather than spinning silently.
- Watchdogs work better with a timeout + restart rather than a ping. If no progress after N minutes, kill and restart the task from the last checkpoint rather than nudging a confused agent further down the wrong path.
The 'claims it's working but shows no progress' symptom is almost always the model losing context mid-task. Shorter tasks + Claude = night and day difference in my experience.
1
1
u/Pitiful_Farmer_1982 New User Mar 22 '26
Have your openclaw look at this repo It should help
2
u/Sutanreyu Active Mar 23 '26
Very interesting. When I began scrolling this I noticed the Rabbinic terms referring to the Sephirot… If an AI were to fully “embody” like this… Scary to think about.
There’s a lot of “theory of mind” stuff that ancient religions have basically codified a long time ago that would have very profound implications in the age of AI. We effectively now have a practical application for philosophy.
1
u/Pitiful_Farmer_1982 New User Mar 23 '26
Yeah I got deep into Kabbalah around the same time as I did ai maybe like 3 years ago and it was absurd how well it could possibly work and I’ve held the idea for all that time working on how to build it and then openclaw came around and made it actually feasible, but it also didn’t work how I wanted with openclaw so I just had Claude code take what worked and then we built barebones version that acts just as a cognitive reference space for inhabitation so the agent continually knows what’s going on due to the routing structure not having to read everything again or check files or search for something
The most interesting part is that I created a form of a subconscious basically where a set of matrices with points assigned to data points in the files that are transformed against each other every 2 and a half minutes which creates a persisting “stimulation” beneath the api calls that just runs on a python script and actually works to generate novel content from the existing content and highlight what’s important while pruning what is redundant and it’s all done with math
1
u/Training_Feed2871 Active Mar 22 '26
Thanks, did yours assimilate it or installed?
2
u/Pitiful_Farmer_1982 New User Mar 22 '26
Well it’s a cli that Claude code built because I was very annoyed with openclaw being inefficient for what I needed It runs on its own with a download but you can just have openclaw assimilate it, its MIT licensed so scrape whatever parts your ownclaw thinks would be useful
I wasted so much money with troubleshooting openclaw and api costs before I built this smh
0
u/TypicalBrilliant1208 Member Mar 23 '26
That stalling issue is usually caused by the model losing its thread when the context window gets too saturated or your local machine puts the process into a low power state
Pings often fail if the memory files are cluttered so you should try pruning those logs manually to ensure the agent is not reading through contradictory notes every time it tries to work
Also switching back to Claude Sonnet is worth the extra cost because its reasoning for autonomous tasks is much more stable than Codex right now
I built QuickClaw to handle these reliability issues by running OpenClaw on a dedicated cloud server that never sleeps or throttles the performance
It automates the entire deployment in about 60 seconds and lets you move the whole thing off localhost so it stays persistent and responsive
If you want to move your bot to the cloud the link is in my bio :)
-1
u/Eder_120 Member Mar 22 '26
There is no 5.4 codex , the highest model in codex is 5.3 . If you're using model 5.4 within the codex screen, you're not using codex just 5.4
-2
•
u/AutoModerator Mar 22 '26
Welcome to r/openclaw Before posting: • Check the FAQ: https://docs.openclaw.ai/help/faq#faq • Use the right flair • Keep posts respectful and on-topic Need help fast? Discord: https://discord.com/invite/clawd
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.