OpenClaw

An Always-On Agent Needs an Always-On Guard

Terse auto-detects OpenClaw, tracks its sessions with live token and cost stats, compresses your prompts by 40–70%, and enforces a hard budget ceiling — so an agent that never sleeps can never overspend.

40–70%prompt token reduction
AutoOpenClaw session detection
24/7burn-rate watch
0data leaves device

How Terse Works with OpenClaw

Terse auto-detects OpenClaw via process and config detection — no OpenClaw configuration changes — and starts tracking the session immediately.

Terse — Agent Monitor · OpenClaw session
Detected
Session tokens
212.9k
Est. session cost
$2.84
Burn rate
$1.40/hr
Uptime
14h 22m
Prompt savings today
−52%
Budget ceiling
$6.00/day armed
Session-level stats via process & config detection · cost estimated with model-aware pricing
👁️

Auto-Detection

Terse recognizes a running OpenClaw instance by process and config — one of 8 agents it detects out of the box. Nothing to change in your OpenClaw setup.

Zero setup
🛑

Budget Circuit Breaker

The critical feature for an always-on agent: burn-rate, token, or dollar ceilings enforced with alert → SIGSTOP pause → SIGTERM kill, before the next API call.

Spend cap
📈

Round-the-Clock Stats

Token usage, estimated cost, and burn rate tracked continuously — visible in the Terse monitor and the floating island, with full session history.

Live
✂️

Prompt Compression

The instructions and messages you write get the full 35+ technique pipeline in Light, Balanced, or Aggressive mode — 40–70% fewer tokens with meaning preserved.

3 modes
🔔

Alerts That Reach You

An unattended agent needs alerts that travel: macOS notifications, Slack webhook, or ntfy.sh push to your phone — 9 alert kinds plus a weekly savings digest.

9 alerts
🩺

Terse Doctor

~25 consent-gated scans: agent loops, duplicate tool calls, redundant reads, context burn, secret exposure, runaway runtimes — with one-click fixes.

~25 scans

Honest About Monitoring Depth

Not every agent exposes the same telemetry. Here's exactly what you get with OpenClaw versus Claude Code.

OpenClaw — process & config detection
Session detection & history
Session token & cost stats✓ estimated
Burn rate & budget breaker
Prompt optimizer & Doctor✓ full
Lighter telemetry — but the optimizer, Doctor, and breaker deliver their full value on every OpenClaw session.
Claude Code — deepest integration
Exact input/output tokens from JSONL session streaming
Cache read/write efficiency, per-turn cost, context-window fill %
30-day historical backfill + session replay export
Run both? Terse tracks OpenClaw and Claude Code side by side.

Frequently Asked Questions

Everything about using Terse with OpenClaw.

How does Terse detect OpenClaw?
Via process and configuration detection — one of 8 agents recognized out of the box, no OpenClaw config changes. Sessions appear in the monitor with token usage, estimated cost, burn rate, and history.
Can I set a spending limit for OpenClaw?
Yes. Set a burn-rate, token, or dollar ceiling in the budget circuit breaker. On breach, Terse escalates alert → SIGSTOP pause → SIGTERM kill before the next API call, with one-click resume.
Why do always-on agents need a budget guard?
An agent that runs 24/7 can loop or misfire while you're away — burning tokens for hours unnoticed. Terse watches burn rate continuously and enforces your ceiling at the process level, so unattended never means uncapped.
Does Terse compress the prompts I send OpenClaw?
Yes — the 35+ technique pipeline runs in Light, Balanced, or Aggressive mode, with code blocks, paths, and identifiers always protected. Typical reduction is 40–70%.
Is OpenClaw monitoring as deep as Claude Code?
No — Claude Code gets exact tokens, cache efficiency, and 30-day backfill via JSONL streaming. OpenClaw gets process/config detection with session-level stats and estimates. Optimizer, Doctor, and breaker work fully for both.
Does any OpenClaw data leave my machine?
No. Detection, monitoring, compression, and budget enforcement all run on-device on macOS or Windows.

Also Works With

Terse supports every major AI coding agent — 8 detected automatically.

Claude Code — CLI Agent 🖥️OpenAI Codex — CLI ⌨️Aider — Terminal Agent 🤖Cline — VS Code Agent 🛑Budget Circuit Breaker

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