Sync Engine
How Claw Desktop keeps your runs up to date.
Claw Desktop continuously syncs with your OpenClaw instance to keep you up to date.
How Sync Works
- Polling — App polls OpenClaw every 5 seconds for new events
- Cursor-based — Only fetches events after your last known cursor (incremental)
- Reactive — New events appear in the timeline without page refresh
Sync Modes
Global Inbox Sync
On app start, Claw Desktop syncs all run statuses in the background. This powers the “While You Were Away” feature.
Per-Run Sync
When you open a run detail view, a focused sync fetches the full event history for that run.
While You Were Away
When you reopen Claw Desktop, you’ll see a summary of what changed since your last session:
- Runs that became blocked
- Runs that completed
- Runs that failed
Updates are sorted newest first, with blocked runs prioritized.
File-System Storage
All synced data is stored locally in ~/Documents/ClawWorkspace/RUNS/<run_id>/:
meta.json— Run metadata and sync cursorevents.jsonl— Append-only event logARTIFACTS/— Downloaded artifacts