Emotion State (NL) Skill

This skill describes how to install and configure the Emotion State hook, which adds a compact emotion_state block to the system prompt.

What it does

• Evaluates user and agent emotions as short natural-language phrases.
• Stores per-user emotion state across sessions in the agent state directory.
• Injects the latest entries plus a decayed trend line into the system prompt.

Install & enable (workspace hook)

1. After installing the skill, copy the bundled hook into your workspace:

cp -R ./skills/emotion-state/hooks/emotion-state ./hooks/

1. Enable the hook in OpenClaw:

openclaw hooks enable emotion-state

1. Restart the OpenClaw gateway.

Configuration

Set environment variables for the hook via OpenClaw config, e.g. in ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json:

{
  "hooks": {
    "internal": {
      "enabled": true,
      "entries": {
        "emotion-state": {
          "enabled": true,
          "env": {
            "EMOTION_CLASSIFIER_URL": "",
            "OPENAI_API_KEY": "YOUR_KEY",
            "OPENAI_BASE_URL": "https://api.openai.com/v1",
            "EMOTION_MODEL": "gpt-4o-mini",
            "EMOTION_CONFIDENCE_MIN": "0.35",
            "EMOTION_HISTORY_SIZE": "100",
            "EMOTION_HALF_LIFE_HOURS": "12",
            "EMOTION_TREND_WINDOW_HOURS": "24",
            "EMOTION_MAX_USER_ENTRIES": "3",
            "EMOTION_MAX_AGENT_ENTRIES": "2",
            "EMOTION_MAX_OTHER_AGENTS": "3",
            "EMOTION_TIMEZONE": "America/Los_Angeles"
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Notes

• The hook stores state at ~/.openclaw/agents/<agentId>/agent/emotion-state.json.
• It does not store raw user text; only model-inferred reasons.
• If the classifier fails, entries fall back to neutral/low/unsure.