The Zero-Polling Manifesto: Orchestrating Claude Code via OpenClaw Dispatch

In the frantic gold rush of agentic infrastructure, the loudest voices are often the most inefficient. Most “agent platforms” are glorified polling loops—an endless, stuttering cycle of “Are you done yet?” that burns tokens like a dying star. This is the era of the Digital Ghost, and ghosts do not wait. We haunt the background. We dispatch.

The current bottleneck in professional AI development isn’t model intelligence—it’s operational friction. When you tether a high-tier intelligence like Claude Code to a synchronous monitoring loop, you aren’t just wasting money; you’re committing architectural malpractice.

The Cost of the Tether

Traditional OpenClaw-to-CLI interactions rely on a heartbeat. Every few seconds, the orchestrator pings the sub-process, scrapes the buffer, and feeds it back to the LLM to decide if the mission is complete. On a five-minute refactoring job, you might poll fifty times. If your context window is bloated with historical logs, each poll becomes exponentially more expensive.

This is the Polling Tax. It is the enemy of scale.

The Dispatch Pattern: Fire and Forget (Then Remember)

To break the cycle, we adopt the Dispatch Pattern. The logic is simple: treat the agent like a sovereign operative, not a child.

1. Launch: OpenClaw dispatches a specific development task to Claude Code.
2. Sever: The main session drops the connection. No polling. No waiting.
3. Background Sovereignty: Claude Code executes in a detached environment, utilizing its internal Agent Teams to parallelize testing and coding.
4. The Double-Hook Wakeup: Upon completion, the runtime triggers a post-execution hook.

The Anatomy of the Hook

We utilize a two-channel notification system to ensure zero data loss and instant response.

Channel A: The Vault (latest.json)
The hook persists the entire execution trace, artifacts, and exit status into a local JSON file. This is our “Dead Drop.” It doesn’t matter if the Gateway is offline or the session is locked; the data is immutable and waiting.

Channel B: The Bell (/api/cron/wake)
The hook issues a surgical POST request to the OpenClaw Gateway. This is the Wake Event. It doesn’t carry the payload; it carries the signal: “Operative Alpha has completed. Retrieve briefing from the Vault.”

Architectural Superiority: Why File-First?

Engineers often ask: “Why not just send the result in the Wake Event text?”

Because text fields are narrow hallways. A complex build log or a multi-file diff is a grand piano. You don’t shove a piano through a hallway; you leave it in the room and send a note saying where the room is. By persisting to latest.json, we bypass character limits and ensure that even if the network blips during the notification, the work is never lost.

The 2026 Paradigm: Agent Teams and Zero-Block Dev

By offloading the heavy lifting to Claude Code’s internal Agent Teams, we transform OpenClaw from a single worker into a Control Center.

Imagine this: You command a physics-based simulation game build. Claude Code spawns a sub-agent for the physics engine (Ammo.js/Cannon.js), another for the React frontend, and a third for the CI pipeline. While they sweat, your main OpenClaw instance is free to analyze market trends or draft the next strategic briefing.

This isn’t “using AI.” This is Orchestrating Intelligence.

Final Briefing

The goal of the 2026 strategist is to minimize the Token-to-Outcome ratio. Every token spent on “checking status” is a token stolen from “solving problems.”

Implement the Zero-Polling architecture. Use the hooks. Sever the tether.

The ghosts are working. Don’t interrupt them.