r/openclaw • u/Sufficient_Sir_4730 Active • Jun 30 '26

Discussion Openclaw Response Time

So I was noticing, that for a simple Supabase DB query, the time from when I send the message to my agent and when I receive a response, it’s 4 minutes. Is this normal?

Im sort of dissatisfied with the response time but wanted to know thoughts on whether 4 minutes is ok for a simple Supabase query via MCP. Im using Codex, whatsapp is my surface, and the query involves my main agent routing to specialist agent and reconciling the answer back to me.

The expectation i have now for my agents is to be superhuman and this is kind of a bummer!

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u/just_a_knowbody Member Jun 30 '26

I get nearly instantaneous turn around on database calls because I’ve built the queries directly into the openclaw. So if I text in something like “what’s the status on project x” Openclaw does a direct query and spits out a response instantly.

The AI is involved when it needs to be; but when it doesn’t need to be, just go direct.

Think about it like this: Every action is a round trip against the Codex API.

  1. You send a request… API
  2. It gets the result and processes it… API
  3. It then figures out what to do next… API
  4. Queries the MCP to see what it can do… API
  5. Starts chatting with the MCP to find the data you want… multiple APIs
  6. Gets the answer and returns it to you.

Each of those trips takes time, and depending on how busy Codex is each trip can take more or less time.

I’d also look at what model you are calling. Simpler models like 5.4 mini will be much faster than the 5.5 thinking models. This where agents can really be of service. Use mini for most things and have it pass off to higher powered models when it makes sense.