OpenClaw Orchestrator Routing Issues: When Delegation Fails

The Problem: Unreliable Agent Delegation

A developer running OpenClaw with a hub-and-spoke multi-agent architecture is experiencing unreliable routing behavior from their main orchestrator. The orchestrator frequently attempts to handle requests directly instead of delegating them to the appropriate specialist sub-agent. According to the report, routing feels unreliable, with delegation working correctly only about 50-60% of the time.

Specific examples include: when asked about workouts, the orchestrator provides generic fitness advice instead of calling the training agent; when asked about weather, it answers from training data instead of calling the weather agent.

Current Setup Details

The developer's configuration includes:

• Main orchestrator handling user interaction
• 7 specialist sub-agents for: Gmail/Calendar/Drive, Todoist, personal training/Notion, grocery inventory, meal planning, weather, and train schedules
• Explicit routing table mapping request patterns to agent IDs
• Hard rule: "You are a ROUTER not a WORKER — if a request falls into any specialist's domain, you MUST delegate"
• Each specialist has its domain clearly defined
• Agent-to-agent communications enabled in configuration
• Orchestrator model: gpt-5.4 via openai-codex

Attempted Solutions

The developer has tried several approaches to fix the routing issue:

• Adding "NEVER" rules for each domain (e.g., NEVER answer email questions yourself, NEVER check weather yourself)
• Adding a "when in doubt, delegate" rule
• Making the routing table very explicit with example phrases

Key Questions from the Developer

The developer is seeking practical advice on several specific issues:

• Is there a known working prompt pattern to force reliable delegation in OpenClaw?
• Does the model choice for the orchestrator matter significantly? Should it be a stronger or weaker model?
• Is the routing table approach the right one, or is there a better way to structure this?
• Any experience with how OpenClaw's subagents.allowAgents config affects routing behavior?

The developer notes that individual agents work well once they receive requests, indicating the bottleneck is purely at the routing step.