Topic
Running costs too high
Running costs
Quick fixes
2–3 min
Plain first steps you can try before buying anything.
Large transcript freezes? Move compaction off the hot path.
A fresh OpenClaw commit moved compaction planning into a bounded worker-thread path because large transcript planning can monopolize the agent event loop. For operators, the lesson is simple: when a long session freezes around history pruning or summarization, treat transcript size and compaction as a reliability/cost surface, not just a slow model. Snapshot first, reproduce with a small canary, upgrade when the fix is available, and keep expensive long-context runs behind a responsiveness check.
High Claude Opus bills? Use your ChatGPT login.
After Anthropic ended Claude auth support for OpenClaw, some former Claude Opus users got pushed toward expensive API usage. If ChatGPT 5.5 is good enough for your routine agent work, direct ChatGPT subscription login in OpenClaw can be the cheaper first test — no Codex-auth detour required.
Recurring agents unhealthy? Stop guessing from logs.
OpenClaw 2026.5.7 added computed status to `cron list --json` and `cron show --json`, including disabled, running, ok, error, skipped, and idle states. That gives watchdogs and dashboards a first-class health signal instead of expensive log-scraping guesses.
Token costs suddenly spike with multiple agents
Multiple agents multiply token burn through retries, long context, and expensive model choices. Measure before scaling.