Concepts

Background reading for the pieces that make OpenClaw tick.

Pages

• Architecture — the Gateway WebSocket network and the pieces around it.
• Sessions & routing — session model, group rules, multi-agent routing.
• Models & failover — provider selection, failover, OAuth, API keys.

Reading list (in the upstream repo)

The repo's docs/concepts/ directory covers more topics not duplicated here:

• agent.md, agent-loop.md, agent-workspace.md — the agent runtime.
• architecture.md — the canonical architecture reference.
• compaction.md, context.md, memory.md — context management.
• messages.md, markdown-formatting.md — message handling.
• model-failover.md, model-providers.md, models.md — model layer.
• multi-agent.md — multi-agent routing.
• oauth.md — provider OAuth flows.
• presence.md, typing-indicators.md — presence model.
• queue.md, retry.md, streaming.md — message lifecycle.
• session*.md — session lifecycle, pruning, the session tool.
• system-prompt.md — system prompt construction.
• timezone.md, typebox.md, usage-tracking.md — supporting concepts.

These read well in the source repo's docs/concepts/ directory; this site curates the most important entry points.