buddy-followup

Agents say "I'll follow up" — and then forget. This skill fixes that.

When you kick off a long-running task and tell the user "I'll get back to you", use this to actually follow through — automatically, on every configured channel.

Installation

Via ClawHub (recommended):

npx clawhub install buddy-followup

When to Use

• You launch a sub-agent, script, build, download, or API call that takes time
• You tell the user "I'll update you when it's done" or "give me a few minutes"
• You need to check back on something after a delay

How It Works

1. You estimate how long the task will take and call the script with that delay
2. Cron jobs fire at the given time on every configured channel (Telegram, WhatsApp, etc.)
3. You wake up with the task context, check status, and reply to the user
4. Still pending? Set another timer and keep the loop going
5. Done? Report results and close the loop

No hardcoded IDs — channels and targets are read dynamically from openclaw config get at runtime.

Usage

bash ~/clawd/skills/buddy-followup/scripts/followup.sh <delay> "task context"

Delay formats: 30s, 5m, 2h

Examples:

bash ~/clawd/skills/buddy-followup/scripts/followup.sh 2m "check if sub-agent finished building the API"
bash ~/clawd/skills/buddy-followup/scripts/followup.sh 10m "check if deployment completed"
bash ~/clawd/skills/buddy-followup/scripts/followup.sh 30s "verify test results are ready"

Run via exec tool — the script exits immediately after scheduling. No background flag needed.

When the Follow-Up Fires

On receiving ⏰ FOLLOW-UP (<delay>): <task>:

1. Check the task status
2. Reply directly — routes to all configured channels automatically
3. Done → confirm results to the user
4. Still running → tell the user, reset the timer:
   bash

   bash ~/clawd/skills/buddy-followup/scripts/followup.sh 2m "still waiting for X, checking again"
   

Requirements

• OpenClaw gateway running
• At least one channel configured (Telegram with channels.telegram.defaultTo, or WhatsApp with channels.whatsapp.allowFrom)
• openclaw CLI available in PATH

Notes

• Channels are discovered at runtime — adding a new channel automatically includes it
• Each timer creates one cron job per channel, deleted after firing
• The agent decides the delay — base it on realistic task completion time