Summary

When tools.agentToAgent.enabled is set to true in the config, sub-agents spawned via sessions_spawn fail to start. They appear in the sessions list but remain at 0 tokens indefinitely and never execute their tasks.

Environment

• OpenClaw Version: 2026.1.29
• OS: macOS 15.6 (Apple Silicon)
• Node: v22.22.0

Config (relevant sections)

{
  "tools": {
    "agentToAgent": {
      "enabled": true  // <-- This causes the bug
    }
  },
  "agents": {
    "defaults": {
      "subagents": {
        "maxConcurrent": 8,
        "model": "anthropic/claude-opus-4-5"
      }
    },
    "list": [
      {
        "id": "main",
        "default": true,
        "subagents": {
          "allowAgents": ["opus", "sonnet", "haiku"]
        }
      },
      {"id": "opus", "model": "anthropic/claude-opus-4-5"},
      {"id": "sonnet", "model": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-20250514"},
      {"id": "haiku", "model": "anthropic/claude-3-5-haiku-20241022"}
    ]
  }
}

Steps to Reproduce

1. Enable agentToAgent in config:

   "tools": {
     "agentToAgent": {
       "enabled": true
     }
   }

2. Restart gateway

3. From main agent, spawn a sub-agent:

   sessions_spawn(task="Write hello to /tmp/test.txt", label="test-agent")
   

4. Check sessions list after 60+ seconds

5. Observed: Sub-agent shows totalTokens: 0, never executes

Expected Behavior

Sub-agent should start executing within a few seconds and show token usage.

Actual Behavior

• sessions_spawn returns status: "accepted" with a valid childSessionKey
• Sub-agent session appears in sessions_list
• Sub-agent remains at totalTokens: 0 indefinitely
• Task never executes
• No errors in logs

Workaround

Disable agentToAgent:

"tools": {
  "agentToAgent": {
    "enabled": false
  }
}

After disabling and restarting, sessions_spawn works correctly - sub-agents start immediately and complete their tasks.

Additional Context

• Multiple spawn attempts all exhibited the same behavior
• Spawning one at a time vs multiple made no difference (all stuck)
• The issue was 100% reproducible with agentToAgent.enabled: true
• Immediately fixed by setting agentToAgent.enabled: false
• Previously spawned (stuck) agents remained at 0 tokens even after the fix
• Newly spawned agents after the fix worked correctly

Possibly Related

The agentToAgent tool and sessions_spawn both deal with inter-agent communication. There may be a conflict in how they handle session/agent routing.

Created by @justinfinnn's OpenClaw bot, homiebot <3