fix(openclaw): retry rejected N1x compaction summaries once

[ericksoa]

Outcome

The N1x managed-vLLM profile gets one corrective summarization retry after a quality-audit rejection. The guard remains enabled. A rejected replacement or failed corrective generation cancels compaction instead of replacing the conversation history.

Independent N1X GPU testing under Windows/WSL Docker recovered the reported missing-section failure with the original pinned Qwen/vLLM setup. The same-runtime comparison changed only qualityGuard.maxRetries from 0 to 1. Native Linux/OpenShell qualification, the original third-prompt recovery failure, and semantic fidelity remain separate acceptance questions. This PR does not claim unconditional resolution of #12297.

Reason

The reported summary was rejected for missing required sections. NemoClaw configured zero corrective retries. OpenClaw already supports regenerating a summary with its audit failure reasons; this change enables one retry for the affected profile.

Related issues

Refs #12297. Retains the N1x request-timeout setting from #12018 / #11805. Does not claim to fix the separate malformed-tool-call issue #12293.

Changes

• Set qualityGuard: { enabled: true, maxRetries: 1 } only for the managed inference.local route, vllm-local upstream, and vllm.n1x.single.qwen3-6-35b-a3b-nvfp4 preset.
• Carry the selected serving preset through source-image Dockerfile staging and image environment. Clear a stale staged preset when selection is removed.
• Preserve safeguard mode, the 300-second timeout per summarization request, one recent turn, and progress notifications. Other NemoClaw-configured safeguard profiles retain zero retries.
• Extend the existing published-OpenClaw harness with controlled audit rejection, corrective feedback, successful replacement, repeated rejection, generation failure, and cancellation cases. Document the retry and timeout behavior.

Verification

Commit and evidence identity

The latest PR commit checked on 2026-10-06 is 7464df67cc3a334a9810fb82b4b5be7c79bd89b6, identical to the independent test commit. This QA-record update changes the PR description only; it does not alter the tested source.

The hardware results below were supplied by the maintainer from an independent N1X test. The local review did not rerun GPU inference. Raw transcripts, model-call traces, artifact digests, and the commands behind the reported 345-test run are not yet linked here.

Independent N1X GPU results

Environment: Windows/WSL Docker, original pinned Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-NVFP4 model and vLLM image, 32,768-token context, max-num-seqs: 2, and original serving flags. This was real N1X inference with vLLM. It does not qualify native Linux/OpenShell deployment or the normal WSL onboarding profile.

Test	Reported result	Elapsed time
Original v0.0.128 runtime	Reproduced missing-section guard_blocked	86.785 seconds
Identical transcript restored on the same original runtime; only qualityGuard.maxRetries changed from 0 to 1	Recovered; actual corrective feedback reached the model and the guard stayed enabled	256.386 seconds
Full PR manual compactions, including the original failing transcript	Three compactions completed and passed the summary audit	94.720, 99.115, and 164.066 seconds
Continued session performing the HTML task	Completed the task and naturally triggered automatic compaction; missing sections triggered a successful corrective retry	285.706 seconds for the entire continuation
Independent automated suite	345 tests passed; reverting the retry setting caused three issue-specific tests to fail	Not reported

The same-runtime comparison isolates the retry setting from a runtime upgrade. The v0.0.128 Dockerfile pins OpenClaw 2026.9.1; this PR pins 2026.9.2. Comparing the complete PR with the old release alone would not isolate that difference.

The original third-prompt Context is too large and auto-compaction could not recover this turn failure was not reproduced exactly. The natural automatic-compaction result is useful evidence for automatic retry, but it is not proof that this original recovery path is fixed.

Fidelity and timing observations

Structural acceptance did not guarantee semantic fidelity:

• One accepted summary described a 544-word essay as an unfinished approximately 320-word draft.
• A later response contradicted itself about unfinished HTML work. The provided report does not establish whether this contradiction originated in the stored summary, retained context, or follow-up generation.

These are material continuity risks. A successful compaction outcome is not sufficient evidence that the earlier work was remembered correctly.

The 300-second timeout applies to each summarization request. Retries, split-turn summaries, chunk processing, and the rest of the agent turn can make total elapsed time longer. The 285.706-second observation covers the entire continuation, not an isolated compaction call. Neither these samples nor maxRetries: 1 establish a hard 300-second overall deadline.

Repository and local review checks

• PR CI, attempt 2 — passed on the tested commit. The initial attempt had an npm ECONNRESET before shard 8 executed tests; its targeted retry passed without a source change.
• Managed images and Docker/Podman activation, platform qualification, security, code quality, and docs — passed on the same commit. These are hosted PR checks, not native N1X acceptance evidence.
• Existing published-runtime proof — 21 tests passed on this commit during the earlier validation. It controls generation and verifies the native audit/retry handler; it does not measure model fidelity.
• Local review on 2026-10-06: npx vitest run --project integration test/inference/ollama/ollama-local-openclaw-config-propagation.test.ts test/generation/generate-openclaw-config.test.ts — 163 tests passed.
• Local fidelity diagnostic — six controlled cases behaved as expected when executing the unmodified audit source section from the published OpenClaw 2026.9.2 artifact. Its SHA-256 and SHA-512 matched the Dockerfile pins. The audit accepted a faithful control, incorrect essay status/length, and contradictory HTML status. It rejected controls missing a required heading, identifier, or foregrounded pending request. This was an isolated audit check, not GPU inference or a reconstruction of the reported transcripts.
• QA text validation — Markdown lint passed with the repository configuration and the PR template's heading convention. No product code, runtime settings, test assertions, or workflow policy changed during this review. No credentials or private transcript content were added.

Review notes

Summary-fidelity investigation

The retry changes the attempt count; it does not add semantic validation. In the pinned published OpenClaw 2026.9.2 artifact, auditSummaryQuality checks required headings, selected literal identifiers, current-request representation, and certain retained-turn pending-request errors. It does not compare every historical factual claim with the original transcript or verify essay word counts, completed artifacts, or consistency between all status statements. The native prompt already asks for factual summaries and separates completed requests from pending requests; these instructions are not a factual validator. If the implemented checks pass, the compactor can accept the summary without another retry.

The checked-in proof likewise verifies identifiers, the latest request, rejection behavior, and unchanged input messages. It does not establish that model-written prose is factually faithful. Keeping the input transcript unchanged during a rejected attempt is different from preserving all meaning in an accepted summary.

This audit limitation exists in the OpenClaw artifact already pinned by the PR base; the PR does not modify that audit. That establishes the mechanism's scope, not a measured absence of fidelity regression. Enabling recovery allows a previously blocked conversation to adopt a summary, so fidelity remains relevant to this PR's acceptance.

Exact attribution of the two observed errors needs the input to each summarization request, active-request state (latestUnresolvedUserRequest), raw model summaries, finalized stored summary, retained turns, follow-up response, and relevant tool/file results. Compare them against a factual record of completed and pending work. This distinguishes missing input, incorrect model summarization, finalization loss, and follow-up reasoning errors. Keep a fidelity repair or upstream report separate from the bounded-retry change; do not weaken the guard or hard-code these examples to make the replay pass.

Remaining native-environment acceptance checks

1. Use a native Linux N1X host and the supported OpenShell/NemoClaw managed-vLLM path. Record the commit, OpenClaw/OpenShell versions, OS/kernel/driver, model and image digests, and serving flags. Preserve the original model, 32,768 context, and max-num-seqs: 2.
2. Verify normal host qualification and automatic preset selection. A fresh or recreated sandbox must receive enabled: true, maxRetries: 1, and timeoutSeconds: 300 without a manual policy override. Verify the supported source-image and rebuild paths retain the selected preset.
3. Replay the captured failing transcript and the original three-prompt sequence from [N1x Linux][Agent&Skills] manual /compact fails with guard_blocked after compaction-liveness fix #12297. Compare maxRetries: 0 and 1 on the same runtime with the same starting transcript. Exercise manual compaction and automatic context recovery separately. If the original third-prompt failure cannot be reproduced, record that gap instead of calling it resolved.
4. Retain evidence that a rejection delivers corrective feedback, at most one corrective attempt is allowed, and a valid replacement can resume the same conversation. For repeated rejection, generation failure, timeout, and cancellation, verify that the failed replacement is not committed and the session remains usable without a permanent busy state.
5. Measure context before and after compaction and validate semantic continuity. Use the transcript and actual artifacts to check essay completion/word count, quicksort execution, HTML completion, identifiers, and pending requests. Inspect the summary and the subsequent response separately; either can be wrong despite structural acceptance.
6. Record each model-request duration separately from total compaction and total turn duration. Verify request cancellation and session recovery; do not use 300 seconds as a universal total-duration pass criterion.

Review and release status

Admin-merged on 2026-10-06 at the maintainer's explicit direction, from the unchanged N1X-tested commit 7464df67cc3a334a9810fb82b4b5be7c79bd89b6. Merge commit: 24a38a6bd34474247b2cfe55112d149dbb483ea4. The merge did not wait for Advisor approval.

Refreshed Advisor run 37510625453 read the new hardware findings on the tested commit. It recorded no unresolved E2E recommendations, but two specialists flagged the same legacy rebuild preset-handoff defect. The overall Advisor gate remains red; it is not represented here as passing.

The separate rebuild follow-up is supported by source inspection and a local diagnostic using the actual preflight, Dockerfile patcher, and configuration generator. With the ambient N1X preset present, staging produced the 300-second/one-retry policy. With it absent, staging produced 120 seconds/zero retries. Image build/removal, base lookup, and GPU network checks were stubbed; no live rebuild was run. The caller at src/lib/actions/sandbox/rebuild-target-runtime.ts:200 omits the recorded preset, while the patcher reads ambient state. Restoring session provenance later does not repatch the retained build context. Carry the recorded preset explicitly through preflight and add absent/stale-environment coverage in a separate repair. This does not invalidate the reported compaction recovery in the tested configuration.

Native Linux/OpenShell acceptance and semantic-fidelity investigation remain follow-ups as listed above. The independent GPU results support the scoped retry mitigation; they do not establish unconditional resolution of #12297 or a hard 300-second total compaction deadline. Retain Refs #12297.

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Signed-off-by: Aaron Erickson aerickson@nvidia.com

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The N1x managed-vLLM profile now allows one quality-guard retry and retains a 300-second summarization-request timeout. Dockerfile changes propagate the serving preset. Tests cover preset-based configuration, managed startup, and retry behavior against the patched OpenClaw distribution.

Changes

N1x compaction retry

Layer / File(s)	Summary
Configure and propagate the N1x retry Dockerfile, src/lib/onboard/dockerfile-patch.ts, scripts/generate-openclaw-config.mts, test/inference/ollama/ollama-local-openclaw-config-propagation.test.ts	The Dockerfile declares and exports NEMOCLAW_SERVING_PRESET, and onboarding patches its value from the environment when the argument exists. The N1x profile sets qualityGuard.maxRetries to 1; tests check the retry count and timeout with and without the preset, including during managed startup.
Exercise retries against patched OpenClaw test/agents/openclaw/openclaw-real-patched-dist-harness.test.ts, test/helpers/openclaw-real-compaction-retry-proof.ts	The real-distribution proof checks zero-retry cancellation, a corrective retry, exhausted retries, caller cancellation, and transcript preservation.
Document timeout and retry policy docs/configure-agents/understand-context-compaction.mdx	The guide describes the timeout per summarization request and the N1x retry policy, including conditions that can stop compaction.

Priority: ⬇️ Low

Estimated code review effort: 3 (Moderate) | ~20 minutes

Change: Bug fix

Sequence Diagram(s)

sequenceDiagram
  participant Harness as Real patched-dist harness
  participant Proof as Compaction retry proof
  participant OpenClaw as Patched OpenClaw compactor
  Harness->>Proof: Run proof with inference safeguard configuration
  Proof->>OpenClaw: Invoke pre-compaction hook with controlled summaries
  OpenClaw->>Proof: Return result or cancellation
  Proof->>OpenClaw: Provide corrective summary after audit rejection
  OpenClaw->>Proof: Return retry result or cancellation

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Suggested reviewers: chandler-barlow

Merge Risk: ⚪ Minimal · up to 7464d

The reported tests cover the configured retry behavior, though physical N1x quality and latency have not been measured. No demonstrated current-head issue remains in the supplied evidence.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4 | ❌ 1

❌ Failed checks (1 warning)

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Docstring Coverage	⚠️ Warning	Docstring coverage is 66.67% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 3 functions across 5 files. (1 skipped: 1…	Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.

✅ Passed checks (4 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly and concisely states the main change: allowing one retry for rejected N1x compaction summaries.

Full details: Docstring Coverage

Explanation

Docstring coverage is 66.67% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 3 functions across 5 files. (1 skipped: 1 unsupported.)

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Code Coverage Overview

Languages: TypeScript

TypeScript / code-coverage/plugin

The overall line coverage in commit 7464df6 in the fix/12297-n1x-compac... branch is 97%. The line coverage in commit 63002cd in the main branch is 96%.

Show a line coverage summary of the most impacted files.

File	main 63002cd	fix/12297-n1x-compac... 7464df6	+/-
nemoclaw/src/onboard/config.ts	98%	96%	-2%
nemoclaw/src/index.ts	94%	93%	-1%
nemoclaw/src/bl...t-management.ts	100%	100%	0%
nemoclaw/src/co.../config-show.ts	100%	100%	0%
nemoclaw/src/commands/slash.ts	100%	100%	0%
nemoclaw/src/on...native-route.ts	0%	100%	+100%

TypeScript / code-coverage/cli

The overall line coverage in commit 7464df6 in the fix/12297-n1x-compac... branch is 85%. The line coverage in commit 63002cd in the main branch is 84%.

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File	main 63002cd	fix/12297-n1x-compac... 7464df6	+/-
src/lib/actions.../status-text.ts	84%	46%	-38%
src/lib/onboard...al-inference.ts	84%	90%	+6%
src/lib/inferen...file/cleanup.ts	73%	80%	+7%
src/lib/state/p...l-retirement.ts	79%	89%	+10%
src/lib/readine...y-production.ts	76%	90%	+14%
src/lib/onboard.../application.ts	55%	72%	+17%
src/lib/onboard...mage/catalog.ts	69%	90%	+21%
src/lib/securit...zer-boundary.ts	0%	85%	+85%
src/lib/onboard...ternal-image.ts	0%	94%	+94%
src/lib/securit...ig-structure.ts	0%	94%	+94%

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🧹 Nitpick comments (1)

scripts/generate-openclaw-config.mts (1)

767-767: 🎯 Functional Correctness | 🔵 Trivial

Run N1x recovery and continuity checks with the summary audit enabled.

qualityGuard.enabled is false for the N1x managed-vLLM profile. This is a temporary mitigation. The source requires guard-enabled compaction to pass N1x recovery and continuity checks before the summary audit is restored. Validate that guard-enabled path on physical N1x before removing this mitigation.

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Review comment at @scripts/generate-openclaw-config.mts at line 767:
Keep the isN1xManagedVllm override that disables qualityGuard until
guard-enabled compaction passes N1x recovery and continuity checks on physical
N1x; remove the mitigation only after that validation succeeds.

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Nitpick comments:
Review comments at @scripts/generate-openclaw-config.mts:
- Line 767: Keep the isN1xManagedVllm override that disables qualityGuard until
guard-enabled compaction passes N1x recovery and continuity checks on physical
N1x; remove the mitigation only after that validation succeeds.

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