Open-sourced self-healing skill for AI agents detects and fixes failures automatically

The self-healing skill is an open-source tool that enables AI agents to automatically detect, diagnose, and fix their own failures. It was developed after a real incident where a cron job broke at 1:24 AM due to a Python script failing to find a template file after macOS cleaned the /tmp directory.

How it works

The agent (named Psy, running on Opus) in the source example detected the failure, traced the root cause, moved the file to a permanent location, updated the code to use relative paths, committed the fix, and rebuilt the failed page. This entire process happened automatically while the developer was asleep, with everything fixed by 9 AM.

Key features

• Failure scanner that checks cron jobs, sub-agents, and deploy logs
• Known-fixes database that learns from every fix so the same error gets resolved instantly next time
• Five-step process: detect → diagnose → fix root cause (not just retry) → verify → log what was learned

Implementation details

The skill works as an OpenClaw skill or standalone tool. It's MIT licensed and available on GitHub at github.com/psyduckler/self-healing-agents. The developer created it as a reusable pattern rather than something baked into a HEARTFEAT.md file.

This type of tool is useful for developers running AI agents in production environments where automated failure recovery can prevent downtime and reduce manual intervention. The approach focuses on fixing root causes rather than simply retrying failed operations.