openclaw/docs/channels/qa-channel.md

summary, title, read_when

summary	title	read_when
Synthetic Slack-class channel plugin for deterministic OpenClaw QA scenarios	QA channel	You are wiring the synthetic QA transport into a local or CI test run You need the bundled qa-channel config surface You are iterating on end-to-end QA automation

qa-channel is a repo-local synthetic message transport for automated OpenClaw QA (extensions/qa-channel, private package, excluded from packaged installs). It is not a production channel - it exists to exercise the same channel plugin boundary used by real transports while keeping state deterministic and fully inspectable.

What it does

• Slack-class target grammar:
  • dm:<user>
  • channel:<room>
  • group:<room>
  • thread:<room>/<thread>
• Shared channel: and group: conversations are surfaced to agents as group/channel room turns, so they exercise the same visible-reply and message-tool routing policy used by Discord, Slack, Telegram, and similar transports.
• HTTP-backed synthetic bus for inbound message injection, outbound transcript capture, thread creation, reactions, edits, deletes, and search/read actions.
• Host-side self-check runner that writes a Markdown report to .artifacts/qa-e2e/.

Config

{
  "channels": {
    "qa-channel": {
      "baseUrl": "http://127.0.0.1:43123",
      "botUserId": "openclaw",
      "botDisplayName": "OpenClaw QA",
      "allowFrom": ["*"],
      "pollTimeoutMs": 1000
    }
  }
}

Account keys:

• enabled - master toggle for this account.
• name - optional display label.
• baseUrl - synthetic bus URL. The account counts as configured once this is set.
• botUserId - synthetic bot user id used in target grammar (default: openclaw).
• botDisplayName - display name for outbound messages (default: OpenClaw QA).
• pollTimeoutMs - long-poll wait window. Integer between 100 and 30000 (default: 1000).
• allowFrom - sender allowlist (user ids or "*"; default: ["*"]). DMs are always open policy; allowlisted group policy also uses these synthetic sender ids.
• groupPolicy - shared-room policy: "open" (default), "allowlist", or "disabled".
• groupAllowFrom - optional shared-room sender allowlist. When omitted under "allowlist", QA Channel falls back to allowFrom.
• groups.<room>.requireMention - require a bot mention before replying in a specific group/channel room (default: false). groups."*" sets the default; per-room tools / toolsBySender set tool policy overrides.
• defaultTo - fallback target when none is supplied.
• actions.messages / actions.reactions / actions.search / actions.threads - per-action tool gating.

Multi-account keys at the top level:

• accounts - record of named per-account overrides keyed by account id.
• defaultAccount - preferred account id when multiple are configured.

Runners

Host-side self-check (writes a Markdown report under .artifacts/qa-e2e/):

pnpm qa:e2e

This routes through qa-lab, starts the in-repo QA bus, boots the qa-channel runtime slice, and runs a deterministic self-check.

Full repo-backed scenario suite:

pnpm openclaw qa suite

The isolated channel-participant-identity-inspection scenario enables execution identity before startup, exercises DM, group, senderless, same- and mixed-participant collect paths, proves an ingress rejection creates no audit rows, and compares JSON plus human CLI inspection across Gateway restart:

pnpm openclaw qa suite --scenario channel-participant-identity-inspection

Runs scenarios in parallel against the QA gateway lane. See QA overview for scenarios, profiles, and provider modes.

Docker-backed QA site (gateway + QA Lab debugger UI in one stack):

pnpm qa:lab:up

Builds the QA site, starts the Docker-backed gateway + QA Lab stack, and prints the QA Lab URL. From there you can pick scenarios, choose the model lane, launch individual runs, and watch results live. The QA Lab debugger is separate from the shipped Control UI bundle.

Related

• QA overview - overall stack, transport adapters, the Matrix live lane, and scenario authoring
• Pairing
• Groups
• Channels overview