clownfish

How Clownfish classifies and resolves a cluster

Clownfish is described in the README as a conservative OpenClaw maintainer tool for one cluster issue and pull request cleanup. It takes a curated GitHub issue or pull request cluster, asks a Codex worker to classify the items, and applies only narrow, auditable cleanup actions when the evidence is strong. The README positions it as the second pass intent based cluster resolution that complements clawsweeper, which scans the whole OpenClaw backlog on a cadence. Clownfish instead handles targeted clusters that were already grouped by a human, by gitcrawl, or by another dedupe tool, and the README notes that cluster discovery currently comes from openclaw/gitcrawl. The allowed automated close reasons are deliberately small. A thread can be closed as a duplicate of a clear canonical thread, as superseded by a clear canonical thread, or as fixed by a specific candidate fix. Everything else stays open or is escalated for maintainer review. The default workflow is proposal first: Clownfish does not comment or close unless a job is explicitly promoted and the deterministic applicator confirms that the live GitHub state has not changed since the proposal was made. This keeps the tool from acting on stale information and gives maintainers a chance to review before anything is closed.

Low signal PR policy and security boundaries

Beyond the three automatic close reasons, Clownfish supports an opt in policy for manual backlog cleanup jobs. The instructions/low-signal-prs.md file covers drive by pull requests that are clearly blank template submissions, docs only discoverability churn, test only coverage spam, refactor only noise, third party capabilities that belong on ClawHub, risky unapproved infrastructure, or dirty branches. The README states that this policy is opt in per job and that it should return a needs human result for plausible bug fixes or anything carrying active maintainer signal. Security sensitive reports are deliberately out of scope. Clownfish routes those references to central OpenClaw security handling and keeps processing the ordinary bugs, provider gaps, and duplicate cleanup that sit in the same cluster. This opt in design means a job only applies the stricter low signal closures when a maintainer has explicitly enabled them, so the default behavior stays limited to the three safe automatic close reasons and never quietly discards a real contribution. The tool follows the OpenClaw SECURITY.md guidance: trusted operator exec behavior, provider gaps, feature gaps, and hardening only parity drift are not treated as vulnerabilities unless there is a real trust boundary bypass. This separation matters because it prevents the automation from quietly closing or mutating reports that need a human security decision. By keeping security items on a separate track, Clownfish stays a cleanup assistant rather than a triage system for sensitive findings.

Status, dashboard metrics, and limitations

The README includes a dashboard snapshot dated June 16, 2026 that shows the tool's recent behavior. At that point the scope was 4178 active latest cluster reports, with 4 policy archived clusters excluded from health stats. Of those, 2722 clusters were clean and completed, 1188 were needs human, 4022 were latest successful, 99 were latest failed, and 3 were cancelled. The dashboard also tracked 7184 distinct pull requests touched, 2929 open pull requests tracked, and 3322 closed unmerged pull requests tracked. Among completed actions, there were 72 close actions and 40 merge actions, with duplicate closes at 25, superseded closes at 22, and fixed by candidate closes at 15. The fix action numbers were small, with 2 executed, 68 failed, and 115 blocked, which the README presents as evidence of how conservative the applicator is. The Status section explains that Clownfish is intentionally smaller than ClawSweeper and that it handles targeted clusters rather than the entire backlog. The dashboard's needs human and apply blocked rows show concrete reasons such as target changed since worker review and merge requires an explicit flag. These metrics give maintainers a transparent view of what the tool did, what it refused, and what still needs a person, which fits the auditable design the README describes.

Editorial conclusion

Clownfish is a conservative OpenClaw maintainer tool written in JavaScript that allows automated closes only for duplicate, superseded, or fixed by candidate reasons, and it leaves everything else open or escalates it for maintainer review.