Pull Request Review Flow: Barnacle and ClawSweeper Roles

This page describes what happens after you open or update an OpenClaw pull request: the roles of Barnacle and ClawSweeper, how to act on their suggestions, and what to do when automation produces no response.

Barnacle and ClawSweeper assist maintainers in keeping the review queue manageable. They do not replace maintainer decisions.

Barnacle

Barnacle provides deterministic triage on GitHub. It identifies common queue management scenarios and applies labels, comments, or closes PRs.

Barnacle may take action when:

• a PR description is mostly empty or lacks problem context;
• a PR contains no useful evidence;
• a change limited to docs, tests, refactoring, CI, or infrastructure has no linked maintainer context;
• a change appears to belong in ClawHub or a plugin rather than core;
• a branch includes unrelated work;
• an author has more than 20 open PRs.

Barnacle runs from trusted repository workflow code. It never checks out or executes contributor code.

Most routing labels are set by maintainers or automation, so contributors do not need to add them manually.

ClawSweeper

ClawSweeper is the AI driven review and maintenance bot for OpenClaw repositories. It can review PRs, assess proof, post persistent review comments, and assist maintainers with guarded repair or automerge workflows.

A positive ClawSweeper result is supporting evidence, not maintainer approval. Maintainers retain full authority over whether and when a PR is merged.

ClawSweeper operates on a queue. Do not expect an immediate response after opening a PR, pushing a commit, or adding a review request. Label updates after a ClawSweeper run may also be delayed.

New PRs are placed in the ClawSweeper review queue. Maintainers can also queue review, repair, or automerge flows using labels or commands. For regular contributor updates, request another ClawSweeper review only after updating the branch, PR description, proof, or code. Then ask for a new review with a fresh PR comment:

@clawsweeper re-review

PR authors can use @clawsweeper re-run; users with repository write access can use either command on any open item. The plain @clawsweeper review command is restricted to maintainers. Be patient: requesting again before the required changes are made only adds queue noise.

When ClawSweeper leaves review conversations, treat them as normal review feedback and follow the checklist below.

If a human contributor or maintainer is actively working on the PR, do not summon ClawSweeper or work on the PR simultaneously. Let the human review or repair finish first. If activity stops, check whether the author was asked to provide proof or make other updates.

Improve a PR during review

After Barnacle, ClawSweeper, or a maintainer responds, use that feedback as the next step checklist for the PR.

1. Treat ClawSweeper's Rank-up moves: and Proof guidance: as the action list for that PR. Ratings and labels are review signals, not fixed merge targets.
2. Push the requested code or documentation change, and update the PR description when the problem, solution, user impact, or evidence has changed.
3. Add the requested proof, using evidence that matches the change.
4. Resolve addressed review conversations yourself. Reply and leave a conversation open only when you need maintainer or reviewer judgment.
5. Request a re-review only after the branch, PR description, evidence, and relevant CI results are current. Multiple update and review cycles between the author, maintainer, and ClawSweeper are normal.
6. Keep discussion on the PR when possible. Move to #clawtributors on Discord only when the PR needs maintainer coordination, automation appears blocked, or the next decision is hard to settle in GitHub comments. Include the PR link, current status, and the specific question or remaining evidence.

Keep the PR body current. Comments help with discussion, but the PR description is the durable summary maintainers and automation revisit.

status: ⏳ waiting on author means the next action is with the PR author: update the branch, PR description, proof, or reply with the missing context before asking for another review.

Useful evidence includes focused test output, CI results, screenshots, recordings, terminal output, live observations, redacted logs, or artifact links. For visual changes, include before and after screenshots when practical. For proof files, prefer linking CI artifacts, GitHub uploaded screenshots or recordings, or a short redacted log excerpt. Do not commit generated proof files unless they are part of the actual docs, tests, or product change.

Redacting sensitive data is the contributor's responsibility. Remove secrets, tokens, private URLs, user data, and unrelated logs before posting proof.

OpenClaw also uses separate stale automation. Unassigned issues and PRs can be marked stale after 14 days of inactivity, then closed after 7 more idle days. Assigned PRs are marked stale 27 days after opening, regardless of later updates, then closed after 7 stale days without activity. If an assigned PR is still active, coordinate with the maintainer working on it.

When automation stays quiet

Automation may stay quiet when a maintainer is already handling the item, a review or repair request is still queued, the event is routine, or the ClawSweeper lane is not configured for the requested action.

It may also avoid action when a trusted workflow would need to run untrusted contributor code. In that case, maintainers use normal review or a safer workflow instead.

Troubleshooting

If ClawSweeper does not respond immediately, wait before retrying. The service is queue based, and repeated comments or label changes can make the thread harder to review without making the queue faster.

Before asking for help, check:

• the PR description is current;
• the latest commit contains the requested change;
• CI has finished, or the PR body explains why any remaining failure is unrelated to the PR;
• the latest review request was made as a PR comment: @clawsweeper re-review;
• a maintainer or contributor is not already actively working on the PR;
• the latest request is not still within the normal ClawSweeper queue delay.

If there is still no ClawSweeper response several hours after the PR is current, or if the PR appears blocked by automation, ask in #clawtributors on Discord. Include the PR link, what you expected, when you asked, and what changed since the last bot comment.

Forking the automation

Projects that want similar review automation can study or fork ClawSweeper:

• openclaw/clawsweeper
• ClawSweeper docs

Related

• Contributing
• CI pipeline