Description

When is called with a non-existent agent ID, OpenClaw creates a workspace directory using the error message string as the path name.

Evidence

During an investigation on 2026-03-02, the following ghost directories were discovered in the workspace root:
1.
2.

Impact

These directories contained nested repositories which triggered a cascading logical loop in a sub-agent health-check cron (). This resulted in a runaway session consuming 32,000 output tokens (~/bin/zsh.01-0.08 cost depending on provider) and significant filesystem noise (100+ staged files).

Expected Behavior

should fail with an error and return to the requester without creating any filesystem artifacts if the is invalid.

Environment

• Version: 2026.2.26 (confirmed)
• OS: Darwin 25.3.0 (arm64)
• Runtime: node v25.6.1