AI / OpenClaw Interview Questions
Explain the internal working of the Gateway's node.invoke frame routing?
sequenceDiagram
participant CA as Channel Adapter
participant GW as Gateway
participant AR as Agent Runtime
participant LE as Local Execution
CA->>GW: incoming message
GW->>AR: node.invoke frame
AR->>LE: tool dispatch
LE-->>AR: result
AR-->>GW: response
GW-->>CA: deliver
Internally, OpenClaw's Gateway communicates with the Agent Runtime and Local Execution processes using a message format referred to as node.invoke frames.
- The Gateway receives an incoming request, whether from a chat channel or a control client, and wraps it as a frame directed at the appropriate Agent Runtime instance
- The Agent Runtime processes that frame, and when a tool call is needed, the Gateway routes a corresponding frame to the Local Execution process responsible for actually carrying out that action
- Results flow back through the same frame-based routing, letting the Gateway broker the entire round trip of a single agent run
This framing is what lets the Gateway act as a genuine broker rather than a simple pass-through, every agent run on an OpenClaw instance flows through this same routing mechanism, which is also why the Gateway's health is central to the whole platform's reliability.
What message format does the Gateway use internally to route requests?
What does the Gateway act as, given this frame-based routing?
More Related questions...
