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README.md

SpriteCore

OpenClaw plugin that owns the data plane for multi-state sprite avatars and voice/TTS. Once enabled, SpriteCore is the single source of truth for:

  • per-agent avatar config (atlas image + manifest)
  • per-agent voice descriptor (provider + voiceId for the watch / phone)
  • the prompt block that teaches the model which avatar states exist (so it knows when to emit <<<happy>>>, <<<thinking>>>, etc., optionally with a -N play-count suffix like <<<wink-1>>> or <<<happy-3>>>)
  • HTTP asset serving (/openclaw-assets/*)
  • streaming TTS proxy (/stream/tts)
  • streaming STT proxy (/stream/stt)
  • the gateway RPC node.getCharacterManifest that ships the watch a ready-to-render manifest

The agent's identity.avatar field in openclaw.json stays narrow: a workspace-relative image path, an http(s) URL, a data URI, or a short string / emoji. Anything richer (atlas, multiple states, prompting vocabulary, voice selection) lives in this plugin's config block.

Quick start

# 1. Install from npm (auto-enables the plugin)
openclaw plugins install @tylerwarburton/sprite-core

# 2. Seed a working default config + placeholder agent atlas
node ~/.openclaw/extensions/sprite-core/scripts/init-config.mjs

# 3. Restart the gateway — the watch/phone now renders the placeholder avatar
systemctl --user restart openclaw-gateway   # Linux systemd user unit
# (or kill + relaunch the macOS menubar app)

The plugin works end-to-end after step 3: a four-color placeholder atlas renders for the default agent id, and TTS/STT are off until you provide an ElevenLabs API key (see streamTts below). To replace the placeholder with real pixel art, ask Claude to run the openclaw-pixellab-avatar skill that ships with this plugin.

Updates later: openclaw plugins install @tylerwarburton/sprite-core --force --pin.

Troubleshooting:

  • 404 Not Found — usually a typo in the package name or a stale npm cache; try npm cache clean --force and reinstall.
  • Plugin installs but doesn't load — confirm plugins.entries["sprite-core"].enabled: true is in your openclaw.json and restart the gateway.

Full config reference

The block init-config.mjs seeds is a minimal subset. The full surface looks like this:

{
  "plugins": {
    "entries": {
      "sprite-core": {
        "enabled": true,
        "config": {
          "assets": {
            "enabled": true,
            "assetsDir": "./assets",
            "publicAssets": false,
            "maxAssetSizeBytes": 10485760,
            "publicBaseUrl": "https://<your-machine>.<your-tailnet>.ts.net",
          },
          "streamTts": {
            "enabled": true,
            "provider": "elevenlabs",
            "apiKey": { "source": "env", "id": "ELEVENLABS_API_KEY" },
            "defaultModel": "eleven_turbo_v2",
          },
          "agents": {
            "agent": {
              "avatar": {
                "kind": "atlas",
                "default": "idle",
                "manifest": "avatars/agent/agent.atlas.json",
              },
              "voice": {
                "provider": "elevenlabs",
                "voiceId": "<your-voice-id>",
                "label": "default",
              },
              "prompting": {
                "descriptions": {
                  "idle": "calm / listening",
                  "thinking": "processing the user's request",
                  "happy": "warm / pleased",
                  "sad": "sympathy / disappointment",
                },
              },
            },
          },
        },
      },
    },
  },
}

Default agent template

init-config.mjs (see Quick start) drops a four-state placeholder atlas (idle, thinking, happy, sad) into <assetsDir>/avatars/agent/ and points the default agent config at it. The runtime renders four solid-colored squares — enough to verify the wiring end- to-end without authoring any art.

Replace the placeholder image with real art whenever you have it; the manifest schema does not need to change. See template/agent/README.md for the swap procedure or run the openclaw-pixellab-avatar skill to generate art via pixellab.ai.

Config reference

assets

Static asset serving for atlas images, frame trees, audio clips.

Field Type Notes
enabled boolean Required to be true for the route to register.
assetsDir string Path the route serves from. Relative paths resolve under ~/.openclaw/state. Default ./assets.
publicAssets boolean When true, /openclaw-assets/* skips gateway auth. Use only when intentional.
maxAssetSizeBytes number Hard cap on per-file size. Default 10 MiB.
publicBaseUrl string URL the plugin advertises to clients in /sprite-core/agents. Useful for Tailscale endpoints.

Path traversal (..), symlinks pointing outside assetsDir, and dotfiles are rejected. ETag + 24 h Cache-Control are set automatically.

streamTts

Streaming TTS proxy. Today only ElevenLabs is wired.

Field Type Notes
enabled boolean Required to be true for the route to register.
provider "elevenlabs" Only value supported today.
apiKey SecretInput Use { "source": "env", "id": "ELEVENLABS_API_KEY" }. Plain strings are accepted but discouraged.
defaultModel string ElevenLabs model id. Default eleven_turbo_v2. Override per request via ?model= query param.

The plugin ships without an ElevenLabs key. You provide your own. Without streamTts.enabled = true and a valid apiKey, /stream/tts returns 503 and the watch falls back silently — agents still work, the avatar still animates, just no spoken audio. See ElevenLabs setup.

For the full wire protocol of /stream/tts (query params, streaming MP3 response, how emotion directives map to ElevenLabs voice_settings, client composition examples) see docs/tts-integration.md.

streamStt

Streaming STT proxy. Parallel to streamTts — same provider, same key, same auth model. Clients POST raw audio; the plugin wraps it in multipart and forwards to ElevenLabs's /v1/speech-to-text.

Field Type Notes
enabled boolean Required to be true for the route to register.
provider "elevenlabs" Only value supported today.
apiKey SecretInput Same key as TTS — ElevenLabs uses one key for both. Reuse { "source": "env", "id": "ELEVENLABS_API_KEY" }.
defaultModel string ElevenLabs model id. Default scribe_v1. Override per request via ?model=.
maxBodyBytes number Optional plugin-level cap on inbound body size (checked against Content-Length). No default.

For the full wire protocol of /stream/stt (accepted audio formats, query params → multipart field mapping, response JSON shape, error codes, curl example, phone-side press-and-hold flow) see docs/stt-integration.md.

agents.<id>

Per-agent rich descriptor that supersedes the legacy agents.list[].identity.avatar object form and agents.list[].voice block.

Field Type Notes
avatar AvatarConfig Atlas descriptor — see below.
voice VoiceConfig { provider, voiceId, label, … } — extra keys passed through to the watch.
prompting PromptingConfig Per-state descriptions used to build the model-side instruction. Optional instruction override.

AvatarConfig — kind: "atlas" (only kind currently supported)

Field Type Notes
kind "atlas" Discriminator.
default string State the agent holds when idle. Conventionally idle.
manifest string Path to the atlas JSON manifest, resolved under assetsDir.

The manifest itself owns frame rects, animations, and transitions — see docs/avatars/formats.md for the full atlas schema.

VoiceConfig

Pass-through descriptor surfaced to the watch / phone via /sprite-core/agents. Extra keys are allowed.

"voice": {
  "provider": "elevenlabs",
  "voiceId":  "21m00Tcm4TlvDq8ikWAM",
  "label":    "default"
}

PromptingConfig

Drives the system-prompt block that teaches the model the avatar's emotion vocabulary.

Field Type Notes
descriptions Record<state, string> One entry per state. Used to render - <state>: <description> lines in the injected instruction.
instruction string (optional) Explicit override. When set, replaces the auto-generated text entirely.

The state names you list here must match keys in the atlas manifest's animations table — that's how the watch maps a model-emitted <<<happy>>> marker to the right animation.

The keyword vocabulary (state names) lives in the gateway plugin; the parsing of <<<state>>> markers from the model output stays on the gateway side (src/gateway/avatar-marker-parser.ts) and the playback code stays on the edge devices (Wear OS DisplayKit). So edge devices stay generic — any state name in the manifest just works.

Routes

Path Auth Purpose
GET /openclaw-assets/<path> gateway* Static asset serving. *auth: "plugin" when publicAssets: true.
GET /stream/tts gateway Streaming TTS proxy (ElevenLabs).
POST /stream/stt gateway Streaming STT proxy (ElevenLabs).
GET /sprite-core/agents gateway { agents: { <id>: { avatar, voice } }, publicBaseUrl? } for clients.
PUT /sprite-core/agents/:id gateway Replace a single agent entry. Body: AgentEntry. Dashboard UI writes here.
PUT /sprite-core/agents/:id/emotions/:state gateway Replace a single emotion entry. Body: { description, directive? }. Dashboard UI writes here.
GET /sprite-core/character-manifest?agentId=<id>[&mode=...] gateway HTTP sibling of node.getCharacterManifest — used by the dashboard UI preview.
GET /sprite-core/ui[/path] plugin Dashboard UI bundle (static HTML + JS, no secrets). See Dashboard UI.

Dashboard UI

SpriteCore ships with a browser dashboard for editing per-agent avatar, voice, and emotion config. It's served by the plugin itself — no changes to the OpenClaw Control UI are required.

URL: https://<your-gateway>/sprite-core/ui

The HTML shell is served publicly so the SPA can bootstrap. Every API call attaches an Authorization: Bearer <token> header read same-origin from browser storage. The dashboard tries (in order) the Control UI's openclaw.device.auth.v1 store and the legacy openclaw.control.token.v1[:<gateway>] key. If neither is present (e.g. the Control UI keeps its session token in memory only), the dashboard renders a one-time "paste your token" panel. Copy the value from ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json → gateway.auth.token, paste it once, and the dashboard remembers it under sprite-core.dashboard.gatewayToken.v1.

The dashboard uses the same TypeScript client SDK (@tylerwarburton/sprite-core-client) that the phone and watch use to render avatars. Previews in the editor drive through the real playback engine, so what you see in the dashboard is exactly what users see on-device.

Writes go through the OpenClaw SDK's config-file write path (readConfigFileSnapshotForWrite + writeConfigFile). Saving in the dashboard is equivalent to hand-editing openclaw.json's plugins.entries["sprite-core"].config branch — and no other branches are ever touched.

Building the UI bundle

The dashboard is prebuilt into packages/plugin/ui-dist/ before publish, so npm-installed copies of the plugin serve the UI out of the box. For in-workspace development:

# from repo root
pnpm --filter @tylerwarburton/sprite-core-ui build       # one-shot build
pnpm --filter @tylerwarburton/sprite-core-ui dev         # Vite dev server (HMR)

In dev mode, Vite proxies /sprite-core/* to the gateway URL in SPRITE_CORE_GATEWAY_URL (default http://localhost:8080).

Gateway RPC

Method Purpose
node.getCharacterManifest Returns { manifest, revision } — a ready-to-render manifest assembled from the plugin's per-agent atlas config + on-disk atlas JSON. The watch calls this through the phone relay.

node.getCharacterManifest is registered by this plugin via api.registerGatewayMethod from index.ts. When the plugin is disabled, the method is unregistered and returns "method not found" naturally — operators get a graceful degradation rather than a stale handler.

How thinking auto-plays

The Wear OS phone-relay (apps/android/app/src/main/java/ai/openclaw/app/wear/WearRelayService.kt) publishes a state: "thinking" cue on the /openclaw/avatars/<agentId>/state DataClient path the moment the user sends a message. If your manifest declares a thinking animation, DisplayKit swaps to it. If it doesn't, the watch no-ops and stays on the previous state.

Model-emitted <<<state>>> markers (parsed by src/gateway/avatar-marker-parser.ts) override this state mid-reply — last write wins.

ElevenLabs setup

The plugin does not ship with a key. Steps for an operator:

  1. Create an ElevenLabs account at https://elevenlabs.io.
  2. Get your API key from the profile menu.
  3. Export it in your shell environment (the gateway must inherit it): 
    export ELEVENLABS_API_KEY="sk_..."
  4. Pick a voice id from your ElevenLabs voice library.
  5. Wire both into openclaw.json under plugins.entries["sprite-core"].config:
    • streamTts.apiKey = { "source": "env", "id": "ELEVENLABS_API_KEY" }
    • agents.<id>.voice = { "provider": "elevenlabs", "voiceId": "<your-id>" }
  6. Restart the gateway.

If you don't enable streamTts, agents still work normally — the watch's TTS playback path falls back silently.

Security

  • Asset serving rejects path traversal (..), symlinks pointing outside assetsDir, and dotfile access.
  • File size capped by maxAssetSizeBytes.
  • publicAssets: true skips gateway auth — only set this when you intentionally serve operator-chosen files to anonymous clients (e.g. avatars on a public web page).
  • The ElevenLabs API key should be a SecretRef (env, file, keychain), never inlined as a plain string in committed config.

Plugin self-containment

Everything avatar / character-manifest now lives in this plugin:

  • src/prompting.ts owns buildPromptingInstruction + isAtlasAvatarConfig.
  • src/character-manifest.ts owns buildCharacterManifest and the wire-shape inlined CharacterManifest type.
  • index.ts registers node.getCharacterManifest via api.registerGatewayMethod and reads fresh plugin config per call.

Core has no atlas-shaped types: IdentityConfig.avatar is narrowed back to string (path / URL / data URI / emoji), AgentAvatarAtlasConfig and friends are deleted, the gateway agent row no longer carries an avatarAtlas block. Disable the plugin and the only thing that stops working is the multi-state sprite avatar (the simple string avatar still resolves through core's resolveAgentAvatar).

Open follow-ups

  • None of substance. The prompt instruction is live (wired via api.registerSystemPromptContribution from index.ts), and per-agent voice has been removed from core — the plugin is the sole owner.

Pixellab.ai pipeline

The plugin ships two Node scripts. Together they cover the create → animate → package flow end to end (once the animate step has its own script).

Create a character

node scripts/pixellab-create.mjs \
  --name "elf" \
  --description "a magical elf with pointed ears"

Queues a 4-direction character on pixellab, polls the background job, and prints the new character_id plus the four rotation URLs so you can eyeball the look before adding animations. --json emits just the id + rotations for scripting.

Add animations

Not yet ported. Use the pixellab.ai web UI or the animate-character script (operator-supplied).

Export into SpriteCore

The plugin ships a Node exporter that downloads a finished pixellab.ai character bundle by UUID and writes a SpriteCore-compatible atlas + manifest directly into <assetsDir>/avatars/<agentId>/:

# Quick path — assumes pixellab key is in `pass` or exported as PIXELLAB_API_KEY
node scripts/pixellab-export.mjs \
  --uid <pixellab-character-uuid>

# Explicit key command + custom output root
PIXELLAB_API_KEY="$(op read op://vault/pixellab/api-key)" \
  node scripts/pixellab-export.mjs \
  --uid <uuid> \
  --assets-root ~/.openclaw/state/assets/avatars \
  --overwrite

# Dry-run the plan without touching pixellab or disk
node scripts/pixellab-export.mjs --uid <uuid> --dry-run

Auth resolution order: PIXELLAB_API_KEY env → --api-key-command "<cmd>" → pass show pixellab/api-key. Pick whichever matches your secret store.

Output:

  • <assetsDir>/avatars/<agentId>/<agentId>.atlas.webp — packed atlas image.
  • <assetsDir>/avatars/<agentId>/<agentId>.atlas.json — manifest.
  • <assetsDir>/avatars/<agentId>/frames/<state>/NN.webp — per-state frame tree (useful for re-packing via pnpm avatar:pack).

The exporter pairs zip-folder hashes with the pixellab API's animation_type field (via GET /characters/<id>/animations) to emit clean canonical SpriteCore state names — happy, sad, thinking, idle — and generates descriptions from the animation's display_name (or the original emotion prompt when no display name is set). Duplicate canonical names (e.g. two idle animations of different lengths) get _2/_3 suffixes. If the metadata fetch fails, it falls back to verbose slug names.

For the end-to-end create → approve → animate → export flow, see the openclaw-pixellab-avatar skill at .agents/skills/openclaw-pixellab-avatar/SKILL.md.

The pixellab.ai online pixel-sprite generator is a candidate art pipeline for the template. The intent is:

  1. Operator runs a Claude Code skill (.agents/skills/openclaw-pixellab-avatar/SKILL.md).
  2. Skill walks them through pixellab signup + API key extraction.
  3. Skill prompts pixellab to generate a character + the emotions/states the operator wants.
  4. A packaging script (scripts/avatars/pixellab-import.mjs) downloads the results and wires them into the SpriteCore template layout (avatars/<agentId>/<agentId>.atlas.{webp,json}).

The skill exists as a stub. The packaging script is not yet implemented (the upstream pixellab.ai API contract needs to be confirmed first); see scripts/avatars/pixellab-import.mjs for the placeholder.

Open follow-ups

  • Pixellab exporter transition cleanup. scripts/pixellab-export.mjs unconditionally writes *->thinking / thinking->* transitions into every atlas manifest, even when the thinking animation has no phased .intro / .outro sub-sequences (the common case for v3-mode outputs). Lint noise in the generated manifest; the runtime silently no-ops on the missing phases. Only emit those transitions when the thinking animation actually has intro/outro phases. ~10-line fix.
  • Pixellab animate template-mode investigation. scripts/pixellab-animate.mjs uses mode: "v3", which produces animation_type: "custom-<slug>" names instead of canonical happy / sad / thinking names. The exporter currently papers over this with a --rename mapping. Pixellab's API may expose a template_animation_id path (or a PATCH for display_name) that would eliminate the workaround — confirm against https://api.pixellab.ai/v2/openapi.json and migrate if available.
  • Authenticated end-to-end smoke against ElevenLabs. Unit tests cover the handler logic exhaustively, but nothing has sent real audio through POST /stream/stt + real text through GET /stream/tts on a paired device end-to-end recently. Worth one credit-burning pass periodically.