lobster

openclaw/lobster is an open-source project by openclaw: Lobster is a Openclaw-native workflow shell: a typed, local-first “macro engine” that turns skills/tools into composable pipelines and safe automations—and lets Openclaw call those workflows in one step.. Indexed here so it can be found — not resold.

It is free. Get it from the upstream repository: https://github.com/openclaw/lobster

From the project's own README (excerpt, reproduced for discovery under its MIT license):

🦞 Lobster

An OpenClaw-native workflow shell: typed (JSON-first) pipelines and approval gates.

Example

A named workflow fetches a pull request with gh, compares it with the saved snapshot, and returns a notification only when it changes:

For repeatable automation, put shell commands, native pipeline steps, and explicit approval/input gates in a workflow file. OpenClaw presents the gate to the user and resumes with their decision.

Goals • Typed pipelines (objects/arrays), not text pipes. • Local-first execution. • No new auth surface: Lobster must not own OAuth/tokens. • Composable macros that OpenClaw (or any agent) can invoke in one step to save tokens.

Quick start

Requires Node.js 22 or newer and the pnpm version pinned in package.json. From this folder: • pnpm install --frozen-lockfile • pnpm build • pnpm test • pnpm lint • node ./bin/lobster.js --help • node ./bin/lobster.js doctor • node ./bin/lobster.js "exec --json --shell 'echo [1,2,3]' where '0>=0' json"

Notes • pnpm test runs tsc and then executes tests against dist/. • bin/lobster.js runs the compiled entrypoint in dist/; build after changing source files. Invalid explicit workflow file paths are reported as input errors (exit code 2). In --mode tool, these failures use the same JSON error envelope as other parsing errors.

Process output limits

Captured process stdout and stderr remain unlimited by default. Set LOBSTERMAXOUTPUTBYTES to a positive integer to opt into a byte limit per stream, per process. Unset or empty means unlimited; zero, negative, fractional, and non-numeric values are rejected before a process starts. This applies to CLI exec, workflow shell steps, SDK exec/shell calls, GitHub recipes, and Gog commands. The existing openclaw.agent 10 MiB limit remains in place; an…