--- doc-schema-version: 1 summary: "Ownership of subagent completion and progress when a requester yields" read_when: - Changing nested subagent completion or sessions_yield behavior - Designing progress delivery that outlives a requester turn title: "Subagent yield handoff" --- # Subagent yield handoff The subagent registry owns completion across `sessions_yield`. A yielded execution ends; the delegated task and its completion audience remain. The registry's requester settlement batch starts a successor turn after the children settle. Gateway admission attaches that successor to a paused subagent when necessary, preserving its original requester. This design applies equally to an orchestrator spawned from an interactive session and one spawned from an isolated cron run. Cron owns delivery of the scheduled result, while the registry owns the nested orchestrator's continuation. ## Ownership through the handoff | Phase | Owner | Required handoff | | -------------------- | --------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | Executing requester | Admitted agent turn | Children identify the spawning turn with `requesterTurnRunId`. Progress callbacks use this turn's live authority. | | Explicit yield | Registry requester-yield settlement | Persist yield intent, freeze the child run IDs, advance the batch generation, and clear the old requester-turn binding. | | Waiting for children | Registry lifecycle and `requesterSettleWake` | Retain captured completion results and schedule the owed batch. Individual announcements must not start a competing continuation. | | Settlement dispatch | Requester-settle wake delivery | Validate the current batch and Gateway owner, dispatch an idempotent internal continuation for a nested requester, and record its outcome. | | Successor admission | Gateway task tracking and paused-run adoption | Continue the paused task under the newly admitted run ID, preserving requester lineage and its outstanding settlement obligation. | | Successor completion | Registry completion delivery | Deliver the orchestrator's result to its original requester. Cron's existing continuation and delivery policy own the scheduled output. | The implementation owners are `subagent-registry-requester-yield.ts`, `subagent-announce.requester-settle-wake.ts`, and `agent-task-tracking.ts`. `adoptPausedSubagentRunForFollowUp` uses the existing registry replacement operation; it does not create a second delegated task. Private child results wait for their spawning turn to settle before individual announcement admission. Normal settlement resumes each finished private child, even while siblings are still running. Explicit yield assigns the frozen batch first, then resumes child cleanup under that owner. Late announcement failures cannot replace the batch's delivery state; already committed delivery evidence remains valid. Restart activation reconciles retained requester-turn bindings before resuming child completion. For a nested requester, settlement persists its paused run together with the child wake batch before scheduling the continuation. This also covers a child that finishes before the requester yields: successor admission must not depend on the later lifecycle-end notification. The successor keeps the same task, and a delayed notification from the predecessor cannot reopen it. While the requester executes a settle-wake continuation, its own completion batch can still be marked dispatching. The yield tool excludes that exact batch from older pending children: it must not promise another wake for the results already being processed. Unrelated pending batches and newly spawned work keep their existing completion ownership. Settlement dispatch uses `subagent_settle` input provenance. Individual announcements and the older descendant-wake path retain `subagent_announce`: the latter already owns its run replacement after dispatch and must not trigger paused-run adoption at admission. Provenance classifies the handoff; live Gateway admission and registry ownership still authorize it. An explicit yield batch must be eligible at any requester depth. The ordinary nested-wave exclusion remains: nested runs without a yielded batch use the existing descendant-settle path. The top-level cron exclusion also remains; starting an independent requester-settle turn for the cron session would compete with its scheduler-owned continuation. ## Invariants - **One completion owner.** Yield transfers ownership before closing the old execution. An existing visible-final receipt for the exact turn and child batch prevents rearming an already fulfilled obligation. Successful batch settlement retires that generation; a repeated callback cannot finalize it again. - **No revived authority.** Neither a stored run ID nor provenance revives a closed execution. The successor passes normal Gateway admission and receives fresh execution authority. Adoption preserves task lineage, not old tool, approval, channel, or worker callbacks. Cancellation, reset, and owner replacement retain their existing admission and cleanup gates. - **Scoped automation management.** An authenticated Control UI administrator's explicit yield can transfer automation management to its verified requester continuation. The registry captures the live authority before yield, promotes it after the whole batch persists, and binds fresh management grants to the admitted successor. It never transfers automation creation, old grants, or direct-user identity. The handoff stays process-local and is revoked by a new direct user turn, cancellation, session reset or archive, and Gateway restart. After the successor binds its run scope, that scope owns the entitlement until it closes. Retiring the delivered child batch cannot revoke a still-running requester. - **Completion-source custody.** Registration retains the live operator source separately from execution. Individual delivery and requester settlement use that captured permission ceiling, not the async caller that later schedules cleanup. Committed settlement, retirement, or source/Gateway revocation releases it; provisional writes and same-task replacement cannot drop it. Retained results do not retain usable authority after that release, and a batch cannot combine incompatible operator sources. Cancellation-only batches keep the existing cancellation caller's admission, rather than using the revoked target to authorize a new turn. Mixed result/cancellation batches require every original source to remain live and compatible. An explicit delivery retry captures its newly admitted caller while live and transfers custody only after the new delivery generation commits; it does not reopen the expired source. Restart still admits a fresh recovery owner rather than reviving the previous process capability. - **Stable audience.** A nested wake uses internal delivery. A settlement continuation targeting a live `sessions_yield`-paused row adopts that row; unrelated inter-session messages do not adopt that row. An ordinary `sessions_send` from the controlling parent to its paused native child resumes the existing task through the same exact-generation admission owner as explicit `mode: "resume"`. Task-owned completion remains the sole result delivery path. An explicit `mode: "followup"` keeps separate activity tracking and leaves the child's original result or pending yield intact. Explicit plugin follow-ups naming a new requester continue to create their own delivery obligation. - **Deterministic batches.** Frozen run IDs are sorted. Findings use creation time, completion time, and child session identity as tie-breakers. Superseded child rows are excluded. Batch identity includes requester identity, child IDs, and yield generation. - **Bounded delivery.** Existing limits remain: three attempts, three ambiguous transport replays, and ten stale deferrals. Active descendants do not consume the stale-deferral budget. Delivery bookkeeping for executions that ended before the current batch's earliest child was created cannot block its continuation. Active descendants and delivery settlement overlapping that batch still hold the wake; historical failure records remain available. A private handoff's observation timeout does not cancel the underlying Gateway turn. When the Gateway reports that turn as in flight, settlement observes the same request without spending failure attempts or discarding the child results. Gateway admission and execution retain their own timeouts; explicit cancellation still stops the turn. Individual private announcements keep their existing delivery deadline. Findings are capped at 4,096 characters, individual results at 512, and route notices at 1,024. Ambiguous replay reuses its attempt key; it does not assert global exactly-once delivery across Gateway restarts. ## Progress after yield Yield closes the old execution, not the delegated work. When the turn would otherwise be silent, the shared reply pipeline can send a waiting acknowledgment. The native subagent registry retains the completion obligation and wakes the requester through its accepted completion path; progress text is not proof that a child finished or that its result was delivered. When settlement resumes a top-level parent with automatic channel delivery, OpenClaw keeps the channel's typing indicator active while that continuation executes. The indicator starts after execution begins, not while admission is queued, and stops when the call settles, is cancelled, or loses its owner. It respects `typingMode: "never"`, uses the `agents.defaults.typingIntervalSeconds` refresh cadence, and requires channel typing support. Private and nested continuations do not send activity to an external channel. This activity signal does not change the configured message queue mode or restore individual tool-progress messages. The former Tasks-backed detached presenter and its notification policies are no longer available. A yielded turn does not start a separate task or flow projection to keep editing a channel progress message. Ordinary channel streaming still follows the channel's settings while its turn is active. [Progress cards](/tools/progress-card) remain durable session state. The parent updates its own card as work advances and when child results return. Inspect native child status or retained messages through [sub-agent commands](/tools/subagents/slash-command) and session history. Neither a saved card nor a stored message ID authorizes a new execution or delivery. Cron observes the registry's descendant settlement boundary before starting its bounded synthesis grace period. A yielded task remains pending between the last worker ending and successor admission; the successor and its completion delivery must settle before cron selects the final result. Execution waits, settlement observation, and synthesis share the existing follow-up deadline and stop on cron cancellation. Suspended or permanently failed child delivery retains the registry's terminal semantics, allowing cron's existing fallback policy to resolve the scheduled result without retrying that delivery. See [Subagents](/tools/subagents#tool-sessions_yield) for tool behavior and [Progress drafts](/concepts/progress-drafts) for channel presentation.