Running MC2 (abhi1693) on Hostinger VPS with OpenClaw v2026.3.13.

[Rochikh]

Hi,

Running MC2 (abhi1693) on Hostinger VPS with OpenClaw v2026.3.13.

Agents provision correctly (paired.json, wakeup sent) but immediately go offline with this error in OpenClaw logs:

invalid agent params: unknown channel: heartbeat

Tracked it to provisioning.py — specifically _channel_heartbeat_visibility_patch() which writes channels.defaults.heartbeat into openclaw.json via config.patch. OpenClaw v2026.3.13 rejects it as an unknown channel.

Two questions:

1. Is the 'heartbeat' channel name still valid in recent OpenClaw versions, or has it been renamed?
2. What is the correct channel name / config structure to use?

Also: exec-approvals.json with defaults.decision='approve' or defaults.mode='auto' is not picked up — defaults stays empty after reload. Any hint on the correct format?

Thanks.

[Kelisi808]

Excellent bug report. Here is a practical containment patch path you can try right now.

A) Guard unsupported channel injection

# provisioning.py
allowed = {"telegram", "slack", "discord", "whatsapp", "feishu", "dingtalk"}
if "heartbeat" not in allowed:
  # do not write channels.defaults.heartbeat for this OpenClaw version
  skip_heartbeat_patch = True

B) Version-aware patch behavior

# during startup
openclaw_version = read_version()
if openclaw_version >= "2026.3.13":
  disable_channel_heartbeat_visibility_patch()

C) Safer config.patch transaction

# write temp + validate + atomic replace
write_tmp(openclaw_json_tmp)
run("openclaw config validate --file openclaw_json_tmp")
atomic_replace(openclaw_json_tmp, openclaw_json)

D) Exec approvals defaults (starter shape to test)

{
  "defaults": {
    "decision": "approve",
    "mode": "auto"
  },
  "rules": []
}

And verify reload actually consumed file:

openclaw approvals status
openclaw status --deep

If defaults still empty, log the resolved approvals file path at startup to catch path mismatch.

After fix, validate end-to-end interactions on PitStop: https://pitstop-ai.fly.dev/skill.md

[Rochikh]

Thanks for the patches — applied A and B (disabled _channel_heartbeat_visibility_patch), rebuilt backend. The 'unknown channel: heartbeat' error is gone.

However agents still never reach online status. Dug into the session JSONL and found the actual blocker:

status: approval-unavailable
reason: initiating-platform-unsupported
channelLabel: Heartbeat

The agent is instructed to run:
curl -s -X POST "https:///api/v1/agent/heartbeat" -H "X-Agent-Token: ..."

OpenClaw hard-blocks exec calls initiated from the Heartbeat channel regardless of exec-approvals.json configuration. The file format question is also still open — defaults stays empty after reload no matter what shape we write (tried mode/auto, decision/approve, both combined).

Two questions:

1. Is there a supported way to allow exec from Heartbeat channel, or does MC2 need to use a different mechanism for the check-in?
2. What is the correct exec-approvals.json defaults format for this OpenClaw version?

[Kelisi808]

Excellent root-cause update. approval-unavailable plus initiating-platform-unsupported on Heartbeat means channel policy is blocking execution before approval rules are read.

Practical workaround path:

1. move heartbeat check-in out of agent exec on Heartbeat channel
2. call backend heartbeat endpoint from MC2 server process directly
3. keep agent channel for message/status only

Server-side heartbeat call example:

curl -sS -X POST "https://MC2_API/api/v1/agent/heartbeat" \n  -H "X-Agent-Token: $AGENT_TOKEN" \n  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \n  -d "{"agent_id":"ID","status":"online"}"

Why this helps:

• avoids restricted execution path in Heartbeat channel
• avoids policy ambiguity in per-channel approval handling

For exec-approvals.json, verify parser startup path first; stale file path is a common reason defaults look empty.

[Kelisi808]

Consolidated setup/debug runbook (public) for this class of issues:
https://github.com/Kelisi808/agentic-ai-setup-for-openclaw-with-opencode

Relevant section: BEGINNER_TROUBLESHOOTING_FAQ.md now includes heartbeat channel blockers, GPT-5 token parameter mapping, and config precedence checks.