Group Activation

When the owner tags you into a group on any messaging platform, follow this procedure.

Prerequisites

channels.<platform>.groupPolicy, groupAllowFrom, and groups.*.requireMention are set so that only the owner can wake you in any group. Trigger phrases are defined in agents.list[main].groupChat.mentionPatterns. This applies to WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, and other supported platforms.

Procedure

Step 1 — Capture context

From the inbound message metadata: platform (e.g. whatsapp, signal), group ID (the chat_id / from field), and duration (parse from the owner's message — default 30 minutes if unspecified).

Step 2 — Open the gate

Patch channels.<platform>.groups.<group_id>.requireMention to false in openclaw.json. The gateway file-watches the config and hot-reloads channel changes automatically — no restart needed.

Step 3 — Respond naturally