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DevClaw 1.3.0 — The Workflow Release

58 commits. 4 roles. A fully configurable state machine. And the default workflow finally makes sense.

The big stuff

Your workflow is now yours

The entire issue lifecycle is a state machine you define in workflow.yaml. States, transitions, actions, review checks — all configurable. The default is dead simple:

Planning → To Do → Doing → To Review → PR approved → Done

Human review, no test phase, auto-merge on approval. That's it. When you're ready for more, uncomment the test phase, switch to agent review, or build something entirely custom. Three-layer config (built-in → workspace → project) means you can override per-project without touching global settings.

Architects

Not everything is a code task. research_task spawns an architect that investigates, posts findings as issue comments, and hands back to you. No PR, no queue — just research → findings → your decision. Junior (Sonnet) for straightforward investigations, senior (Opus) for the hard stuff.

The PR feedback loop actually works now

This was the missing piece. Before 1.3, if someone left a review comment or requested changes, nothing happened automatically. Now:

  • PR approved → auto-merge, issue closed, next task picked up
  • Changes requested → issue moves to "To Improve", DEV gets dispatched with the review context
  • PR comment with feedback → same thing, with 👀 reaction so you know it was processed
  • Merge conflict → back to DEV with context

The heartbeat drives all of this. No orchestrator tokens spent.

Everything is configurable, nothing is hardcoded

  • Roles — dynamic registry. Developer, tester, architect, reviewer ship built-in. Adding a new role is one registry entry.
  • Models — override per role, per level, per project. workflow.yaml → roles.developer.models.senior: your-model-here
  • States — add, remove, rename. Queue states get auto-dispatched, hold states pause for humans, terminal states close things out.
  • Review policy — human (GitHub/GitLab approval), agent (AI reviewer), auto (hybrid). Per-issue override with labels.
  • Multiple channels per project — same project, different notification groups. Multi-group isolation via notify:{groupId} labels keeps the right people in the loop.

New tools

Tool What
research_task Spawn an architect for design investigation
workflow_guide Interactive config reference — call before editing workflow.yaml
autoconfigure_models LLM-powered model selection based on what's available
task_edit_body Edit issue title/description (Planning state only, audit-logged)

14 tools total (was 11).

Under the hood

  • Provider resilience — all GitHub/GitLab calls now retry with exponential backoff + circuit breaker. No more single-failure cascades.
  • Bootstrap hook — role instructions injected at session startup via agent:bootstrap, not appended to task messages. Cleaner, no audit noise.
  • Project-first schema — projects.json restructured with project as the top-level key. Auto-migrates from old format.
  • Orphaned session cleanup — health pass finds and cleans up zombie subagent sessions.
  • GitHub timeline API — more reliable PR detection for issue linking.
  • Inline markdown links everywhere. Telegram link previews disabled by default (configurable).

Breaking changes

None that require manual intervention. Schema migrations run automatically. But be aware:

  • design_task → renamed to research_task
  • QA role → renamed to Tester
  • Group IDs → project slugs across all tools
  • Workspace data directory → <workspace>/devclaw/ (was <workspace>/projects/)
  • Default review policy → human (was auto)
  • Default workflow → no test phase (was included)

All migrations are automatic. Existing workflow.yaml files are not overwritten.

Fixes

  • PR comment detection actually works (was checking for non-existent "robot" emoji)
  • Self-merged PRs can't bypass review:human anymore
  • Health pass no longer kills workers it shouldn't
  • GitLab approval detection replaced with merge status (more reliable)
  • Heartbeat only auto-merges PRs that are supposed to be auto-merged

Docs

Fully rewritten for 1.3.0. New Workflow Reference covers the state machine, review policies, and test phase in one place. All cross-references updated.

Install / upgrade

openclaw plugins install @laurentenhoor/devclaw

Full changelog: CHANGELOG.md