Sapience Suite for OpenClaw

The Sapience Suite transforms OpenClaw from a reactive assistant into a proactive agent with genuine autonomy. It learns when to act, when to propose, when to ask, and when to explore — calibrated to your actual preferences, not a static policy you had to configure upfront.

The suite has four plugins that each work independently and compose into a whole:

| Plugin | Does | |--------|------| | sapience-thinking | Periodic thinking passes; generates observations and proposals | | sapience (this plugin) | Routes proposals through autonomy tiers; calibrates to your preferences; delivers weekly digest | | sapience-feedback | Captures corrections and confirmations from chat; recalibrates autonomy profile | | sapience-goals | Accepts fuzzy long-running goals; decomposes them; tracks progress; weekly status |

How it works

sapience-thinking runs a thinking pass every 15 minutes and writes proposals to proposals.jsonl. sapience reads that sidecar, routes each proposal through an autonomy decision function, and delivers it to your main session at the right level:

• Act — high-confidence, reversible, low-blast-radius → done immediately, brief notification
• Propose — worth doing, needs your approval → surfaces it for a yes/no
• Ask — agent can do it but needs one piece of information → asks exactly what's needed
• Explore — the problem is real but the right path is unclear → presents 2–3 options with tradeoffs
• Learning — new domain or low confidence → calibration question before acting

The routing decision uses a calibration profile: per-domain, per-action-class entries with a confidence score. Until a domain is calibrated, everything goes through Learning mode and will ask you to confirm it's choices before acting.

Setup

Prerequisites

Install sapience-thinking first. Sapience reads its output.

Install order

openclaw plugins install npm:@akalsey/sapience-thinking
openclaw plugins install npm:@akalsey/sapience
openclaw plugins install npm:@akalsey/sapience-feedback   # optional
openclaw plugins install npm:@akalsey/sapience-goals       # optional

Configuration (sapience)

{
  "plugins": {
    "sapience": {
      "autonomy": {
        "defaultTier": "propose",
        "domainFloors": {
          "github": "propose",
          "salesforce": "ask"
        }
      },
      "learning": {
        "enabled": true,
        "confidenceDropThreshold": 0.4
      },
      "digest": {
        "enabled": true,
        "day": "friday",
        "time": "17:00"
      }
    }
  }
}

defaultTier — What tier to use for uncalibrated actions when learning mode is off. Default: "propose".

domainFloors — Minimum tier for a domain. If calibration says act for a domain with floor propose, it routes as propose. Use this for domains where you never want autonomous action regardless of confidence.

confidenceDropThreshold — Below this confidence, Learning mode fires instead of the calibrated tier. Default: 0.4.

digest — Weekly summary of what was acted on, what's pending review, and what's planned. Delivered at the configured day and time.

Output files

| File | Purpose | |------|---------| | ~/.openclaw/sapience/calibration.json | Autonomy calibration profile (shared with sapience-feedback) | | ~/.openclaw/sapience/processed-passes.json | Tracks which proactive-thinking passes have been routed | | ~/.openclaw/sapience/action-log.md | Log of every Act-tier item delivered |

Training: calibrating autonomy

Calibration is the process of teaching the agent your preferences per domain and action type.

Learning mode

When sapience sees a domain/action-class combination with no calibration data (or low confidence), it fires a Learning prompt instead of acting:

"I noticed [item]. My instinct is to surface this as a proposal. Is that the right level of initiative, or would you prefer I handle this differently?"

You respond to confirm or redirect. The calibration profile updates accordingly.

How confidence builds

| Event | Effect | |-------|--------| | You confirm the proposed approach ("yes, that's right") | Confidence +0.1 | | You correct the approach ("no, just do it") | Confidence −0.3, tier updated | | No feedback | Confidence unchanged |

Confidence caps at 1.0 and floors at 0.0. A domain needs roughly 3–5 confirmations to reach the default threshold (0.4) from zero.

Reading the calibration profile

cat ~/.openclaw/sapience/calibration.json

Each entry:

{
  "domain": "github",
  "action_class": "github/action",
  "tier": "propose",
  "confidence": 0.7,
  "confirmed_count": 4,
  "corrected_count": 1,
  "last_calibrated": "2026-05-20T14:00:00Z",
  "notes": ""
}

Resetting a domain

Delete the entry from calibration.json to reset a domain to Learning mode.

Day-to-day use

Once installed, the suite runs in the background. What you'll see in your sessions:

• [SAPIENCE: PROPOSE] — a proposal needing your yes/no
• [SAPIENCE: ACT] — notification of something just done
• [SAPIENCE: ASK] — a question needed before proceeding
• [SAPIENCE: EXPLORE] — a problem with options for you to choose from
• [SAPIENCE: CALIBRATE] — a calibration question for a new domain
• [SAPIENCE: WEEKLY DIGEST] — Friday summary of actions, pending items, and plans

You don't need to do anything to receive these — they arrive as injected turns in your active session.

Weekly digest

Every Friday at 5pm (or your configured time), the digest summarizes:

• What was acted on this week
• Proposals still waiting on your input
• What's planned for next week

Troubleshooting

Nothing being delivered to my session Check that proactive-thinking is writing proposals.jsonl:

cat ~/.openclaw/proactive-thinking/proposals.jsonl | tail -1 | python3 -m json.tool

If the file is empty or missing, proactive-thinking isn't running. Check its logs first.

Everything is going to Learning mode Expected behavior for the first week or two. Each calibration response builds confidence. If it continues beyond 2–3 weeks for a domain you use daily, check calibration.json — entries may not be getting written.

Calibration profile not updating Feedback plugin (sapience-feedback) handles explicit correction/confirmation capture. If it's not installed, calibrations only happen through the Learning mode prompts. Install sapience-feedback for passive capture from chat messages.

domainFloors not respected Floors only prevent routing above the floor — they don't push Act-tier items down to propose. "github": "propose" means github/action can be at most propose, ask, or explore, never act. If you're seeing Act-tier github items, check the floor config key matches the domain name exactly (lowercase).

Duplicate deliveries processed-passes.json tracks which proactive-thinking passes have been routed. If it's missing or corrupt, passes get re-delivered. Delete it and it will rebuild from the current pass forward.