clawdbot/docs/rpc.md

summary, read_when

summary	read_when
JSON RPC contract used by the mac app to talk to the gateway	Changing mac app RPC or agent toggles

Clawdis Agent RPC

Live, stdin/stdout JSON RPC used by the mac app (XPC) to avoid spawning clawdis agent --json for every send and to toggle runtime features (e.g., heartbeats) without restarting the gateway.

How it is launched

• The mac app starts clawdis rpc in the configured project root (CommandResolver.projectRoot(), defaults to ~/Projects/clawdis).
• Environment PATH is augmented with repo node_modules/.bin, pnpm home, /opt/homebrew/bin, /usr/local/bin.
• Process is kept alive; crashes are handled by the app’s RPC helper restarting it.

Request/response protocol (newline-delimited JSON)

Requests (stdin)

• {"type":"status"} → health ping.
• {"type":"send","text":"hi","session":"main","thinking":"low","deliver":false,"to":"+1555..."} → invokes existing agent send path.
• {"type":"set-heartbeats","enabled":true|false} → enables/disables web heartbeat timers in the running gateway process.

Responses (stdout)

• {"type":"result","ok":true,"payload":{...}} on success.
• {"type":"error","error":"..."} on failures or unsupported commands.

Notes:

• send reuses the agent JSON payload extraction; payload.payloads[0].text carries the text reply when present.
• Unknown type returns error.

Heartbeat control (new)

• The mac menu exposes “Send heartbeats” toggle (persisted in UserDefaults).
• On change, mac sends set-heartbeats RPC; the gateway updates an in-memory flag and short-circuits its heartbeat timers (web-heartbeat logging + reply heartbeats).
• No gateway restart required.

Fallbacks / safety

• If the RPC process is not running, mac-side RPC calls fail fast and the app logs/clears state; callers may fall back to one-shot CLI where appropriate.
• PATH resolution prefers a real clawdis binary, otherwise node + repo bin/clawdis.js, otherwise pnpm clawdis.

Future extensions

• Add abort to cancel in-flight sends.
• Add compact / status --verbose to return gateway internals (queue depth, session info).
• Add a JSON schema test for the RPC contract.