Problem

The gateway process accumulates thousands of open file descriptors (observed 14,039, of which 13,982 are .md files likely from plugins like claude-mem/lossless-claw). When child_process.spawn is called via exec tool, it fails with Error: spawn EBADF because posix_spawn cannot handle the massive fd table.

Error logs

[process/supervisor] spawn failed: runId=neat-atlas reason=Error: spawn EBADF
[tools] exec failed: spawn EBADF raw_params={"command":"bash /Users/loyu/.../healthcheck.sh","timeout":15}

This affects ALL exec tool calls — MCP server startup, shell scripts, Python scripts, simple ls commands.

Root cause

The default stdinMode in createChildAdapter is "inherit" when no input is provided. When combined with the fd leak, the inherit + detached: true spawn fails with EBADF. The existing no-detach fallback doesn't help because it still uses "inherit" stdin and the same fd table is inherited.

Additionally, the fd leak itself indicates that some plugin is opening markdown files without closing them.

Fix approach

1. src/process/supervisor/adapters/child.ts: Default stdinMode to "pipe" when process.stdin.isTTY is false (i.e., service-managed gateway). In service mode, stdin is /dev/null so "inherit" provides no benefit but exposes the child to fd table issues.

2. src/process/supervisor/adapters/child.ts: Always add a pipe-stdin fallback that retries with ["pipe", "pipe", "pipe"] + detached: false, so even if the first spawn fails with EBADF, it retries with a safe configuration.

Environment

• openclaw: 2026.5.3
• OS: macOS 26.1 (Darwin 25.4.0)
• Node: 25.9.0
• Running via launchd as a gateway service

Related

Will open a PR with the fix.