@gethelio/helio-openclaw

OpenClaw plugin adapter for Helio — governs in-process tool calls through Helio's policy sideband.

Status: pre-release / in active development (0.1.0). The adapter and the Helio sideband evidence contract it relies on are still being finalized. Not yet recommended for production use. Track progress in Helio issue #11.

What this is

Helio is an out-of-process governance proxy for AI agents: an agent cannot reach a tool except through Helio, which applies operator policy (allow / deny / require-approval / rate-limit / spend-limit / dry-run) and writes an audit trail.

For MCP agents that enforcement is structural (Helio owns the transport). OpenClaw runs its tools in-process, so there is nothing to proxy — instead OpenClaw's plugin hooks are the enforcement point, and this adapter asks Helio for the decision over a local HTTP sideband. Helio calls this the host-enforced enforcement grade: it is cooperative, and works only because this adapter faithfully calls Helio, honors the decision, and reports the outcome.

This package is a pure translator — OpenClaw hook ⇄ Helio sideband HTTP. No policy logic lives here; every decision, limit, approval, and audit record lives in Helio core.

⚠️ Fail-closed by design

If the Helio sideband is unreachable, times out, or returns a 5xx, this adapter blocks the tool call ({ block: true }). This is a deliberate, non-configurable guarantee — it is what couples tool execution to Helio's liveness, and there is no escape hatch to "proceed on a failed decision." A Helio outage will halt tool calls mid-conversation. For local development without a Helio proxy, simply do not enable this plugin.

The same posture covers misconfiguration: if the adapter token is missing or the plugin config is invalid, the adapter still registers — but every tool call and install is blocked, with a loud error log. It never leaves the tool surface ungoverned (it does not rely on the host aborting startup), so a config mistake fails closed and visibly rather than silently bypassing governance.

Install

Install it into your OpenClaw gateway with OpenClaw's plugin installer (it resolves the package from npm or ClawHub and registers the compiled entry declared by this package's openclaw.extensions field):

openclaw plugin install @gethelio/helio-openclaw
# no global openclaw CLI on your PATH? run it via npx:
npx openclaw plugin install @gethelio/helio-openclaw
# once published to ClawHub, the clawhub: spec also works:
openclaw plugin install clawhub:@gethelio/helio-openclaw

This is a plugin, not a CLI — it ships no executable, so npx @gethelio/helio-openclaw does nothing. Use openclaw plugin install (above) to register it with a gateway.

Embedding OpenClaw in your own Node app? Add it as a dependency instead and let the gateway auto-discover it on startup via the openclaw.extensions manifest field:

npm install @gethelio/helio-openclaw
# or: pnpm add @gethelio/helio-openclaw

openclaw itself is a peer dependency, supplied by your gateway.

Configure

Provide the adapter bearer token via the environment, and point the plugin at your Helio sideband (defaults shown):

export HELIO_ADAPTER_TOKEN="<adapter-scope bearer token from Helio>"

// plugin config (see openclaw.plugin.json for the full schema)
{
  "helioBaseUrl": "http://127.0.0.1:3200",
  "tokenEnv": "HELIO_ADAPTER_TOKEN",
  "origin": "openclaw",
  "evaluateTimeoutMs": 2000,
}

The token is the adapter-scope token (HELIO_ADAPTER_TOKEN), never the SDK token. The adapter never sends an Origin header (Helio's browser-forgery guard rejects it).

Grounding evidence (optional)

To let a later evidence-grounded policy enforce on facts a tool produced, configure success-only extraction rules keyed by tool name. Each rule pulls a value out of event.result by an explicit segment path (array form, not a dotted string — a key containing . stays unambiguous) and grounds it under an evidence_key:

{
  "evidence": {
    "send_email": [
      { "key": "recipient", "path": ["to"], "ttlSeconds": 300 },
      { "key": "message_id", "path": ["id"] },
    ],
    "http_request": [{ "key": "host", "path": ["url", "host"] }],
  },
}

Evidence is attached only on a successful outcome; a rule whose path is absent in the result is silently skipped (never sent as undefined). Each key must be named by a Helio evidence.requires policy rule — an unlisted key is silently not stored by the proxy, so a later grounded /evaluate would fail closed.

How it works

OpenClaw hook	Helio call	Result mapping
before_tool_call	POST /evaluate	allow → proceed · deny/rate_limited/spend_limited/dry_run → block · require_approval → native approval card
after_tool_call	POST /audit	records the outcome (consumes counters); attaches success-only evidence
before_install	POST /install-scan	deny → block the install · allow → proceed

See docs/adapter-api.md for the canonical sideband wire contract.

Known limitations

This is the cooperative host-enforced enforcement grade — it relies on OpenClaw's hook gate. The /evaluate decision is enforced (a block result prevents the tool from running). One known gap: when an approval resolves, the adapter records it via POST /approval/:id/resolve in the hook's onResolution callback, but the OpenClaw runtime invokes that callback fire-and-forget (failures are logged, not awaited). So if recording the resolution fails (e.g. the Helio sideband is down) the tool can still run without Helio recording the approval. The adapter surfaces the failure (host log; and Helio's audit later flags it as approval_unresolved → evaluation_expired), but cannot prevent it adapter-side — closing this needs an upstream OpenClaw change. Tracked upstream.

Development

pnpm install
pnpm test          # vitest (typecheck against the real SDK types is part of the suite)
pnpm typecheck     # tsc --noEmit
pnpm lint          # eslint (flat config)
pnpm format        # prettier --write
pnpm build         # tsup → dist/ (compiled ESM + .d.ts)

Security

This is a security-governance component. Please report vulnerabilities responsibly — see SECURITY.md (forthcoming) rather than opening a public issue.

License

Apache-2.0 © Helio Authors