OpenClaw Telemetry v0.1.0

Rewrite against OpenClaw 2026.8+ and Latitude's current span contract. Lockstep release with @latitude-data/openclaw-telemetry-cli 0.1.0. Requires OpenClaw 2026.8.1 or newer.

Fixed

• The plugin emits again on OpenClaw 2026.8.1+. Upstream removed the before_agent_start hook (replaced by before_model_resolve / before_prompt_build / agent_turn_prepare), and 0.0.9 opened its root span only there, so on current OpenClaw every later hook found no run in flight and nothing was ever exported; the gateway log only showed unknown typed hook "before_agent_start" ignored. The root now opens lazily on the first hook that carries a run id (llm_input in practice), and the run's true start is back-dated from agent_end.durationMs.
• Tokens, cost, conversation and tools reach Latitude's rollups. Spans carry gen_ai.operation.name (invoke_agent / chat / execute_tool / memory operations). Since June, Latitude's trace and session rollups only count spans classified as generations or tool calls, so 0.0.9's unclassified agent / model_call / tool_call:* spans would have shown a trace with no tokens, no cost, no messages and no tools even once traces flowed.
• Finalization no longer races llm_output. OpenClaw fires agent_end before llm_output with awaits in between, so the microtask deferral in 0.0.7 was not enough. The run ships once both have arrived, or after a short grace period when llm_output never comes.
• Compaction and subagent hooks are keyed by session. Both stopped carrying the parent run id upstream; they now resolve the open run through the session key (requesterSessionKey for subagents).
• Diagnostics land in the gateway log. Output goes through OpenClaw's api.logger instead of raw stderr, which the gateway never captured.

Added

• Per-call usage, cost and output. Each llm_request span takes its tokens (input, output, cache read/write, reasoning), OpenClaw's own cost (gen_ai.usage.cost, catalog or provider-billed), response id, finish reason, output message and the exact input transcript from the assistant message it produced, matched by timestamp against the model_call_started / model_call_ended window. Harnesses that never fire the per-call hooks get llm_request spans synthesized from the transcript instead.
• Time to first token (gen_ai.server.time_to_first_token) from model_call_ended.timeToFirstByteMs, plus gen_ai.request.stream.
• Tool definitions (gen_ai.tool.definitions) from llm_input.tools, the post-policy tool list offered to the model, so the Tools page knows what the agent is equipped with. config.toolDefinitions=false opts out.
• End-user identity. user.id is the sender of a user-triggered turn; the display name and handle come from message_received or from the ⟦openclaw:ctx⟧ block channels prefix to the prompt, as openclaw.sender.* metadata. OpenClaw's injected [openclaw.runtime-context] message is exported with role system so a turn does not render as two user messages.
• Memory. OpenClaw's built-in memory (MEMORY.md, USER.md, memory/*.md) surfaces as OTEL GenAI memory operations under the store openclaw/<agentId>: the snapshot injected at session start is one search_memory per session, memory_search / memory_get calls are reads, and write / edit calls on a memory file are upsert_memory (or delete_memory when the file is emptied) carrying the full new body. Switches: config.memory, config.memoryContent.
• Cron runs are tagged cron:<jobId> with the job id and name in metadata, derived from the isolated session key or the latest cron_changed start for the agent.
• Subagents nest under the sessions_spawn tool call that created them: a subagent span spanning spawn to ended, with the child run's whole interaction tree underneath, in the parent's trace and session. Child spans carry the label as gen_ai.agent.name and keep their own session id under openclaw.session.id.
• Compactions are model calls. A compaction span is a chat span whose input is the messages being compacted and whose output is the summary that replaced them (read from OpenClaw's transcript store, which persists it before after_compaction fires), with the before/after message and token counts; the summarizer fires no per-call hooks, so openclaw.usage.state=unreported. A compaction outside a run (sessions.compact) ships as its own trace whose root is named compaction, so it is filterable by name and never mistaken for a user turn.
• Derived tags and metadata: openclaw, the channel, the agent id, cron:<job> and subagent:<agent> tags; openclaw.* metadata (run, session, channel, trigger, model, sender, plugin version). Operators add their own with config.tags / config.metadata, and config.serviceName sets the OTLP service name.
• Transport retries. 429, 5xx and network errors retry with backoff honouring Retry-After (capped at 30 s, since exports are sequential); other 4xx are final so no span is ever sent twice. gateway_stop flushes the queue.
• Per-attribute content budget (config.maxContentChars, default 256 KiB). Strings are truncated from the middle without splitting a surrogate pair; message lists, tool definitions and memory records stay valid JSON by truncating the strings inside them first and then dropping whole items from the middle (a message list gets a system marker saying how many were omitted).
• Transcript dialect. The message normalizer understands OpenClaw's own transcript (toolCall blocks, toolResult messages, thinking blocks, base64 images, custom runtime notes) and the toolResult blocks the Codex harness nests inside tool results.
• Codex harness support. OpenClaw's Codex app-server harness (ChatGPT OAuth models) passes plugins an empty history, a per-turn transcript, usage only on the turn's final message and no per-call hooks. The plugin rebuilds the session conversation from the turns it has seen and, on a cold start, from OpenClaw's transcript store (the per-agent openclaw-agent.sqlite on 2026.9+, read through node:sqlite, or the older sessions/<id>.jsonl file), prepending it to every input so the trace and session views read as one conversation (openclaw.history.source says where it came from); it synthesizes llm_request spans from the transcript, puts the attempt aggregate on the last call when no message carried usage, takes time to first token from the first streamed delta of the agent event stream (openclaw.ttft.source=stream), prepends streamed reasoning to a call's output when its transcript message carries none (openclaw.reasoning.source=stream), records memory writes made through Codex's apply_patch, and labels the result-announcement runs interaction.kind=announce.

Changed

• Span names follow the Latitude harness family: interaction, llm_request, tool_call:<name>, subagent, compaction, plus memory operation names. Tool and memory spans are OTLP CLIENT spans.
• Usage lives only on llm_request spans; the root carries counts (openclaw.llm_calls, openclaw.tool_calls) and the turn outcome.
• Minimum OpenClaw version is 2026.8.1.

Removed

• The before_agent_start subscription and the agent / model_call span names.