Cadence¶
Ambient intelligence via typed signals, sources, and responders.
Cadence is OpenClaw's event-driven automation layer. Instead of waiting for a user message, the gateway reacts to things that happen — a file changes in your Obsidian vault, a scheduled time arrives, a learning insight fires — and takes action automatically.
How it works¶
Cadence has three building blocks:
- Signals — Typed events that describe something that happened (
obsidian.note.modified,cadence.cron.fired,journal.insight.extracted). - Sources — Watchers that detect changes and emit signals. The Obsidian watcher monitors your vault for file edits. The cron bridge fires signals on a schedule.
- Responders — Handlers that subscribe to signals and do work. The insight extractor sends journal content to an LLM. The digest responder batches insights and delivers them to Telegram.
Signals flow through a central bus. Sources push signals onto the bus; responders consume them. Each responder declares which signal types it cares about. Handlers run sequentially — no race conditions, no lost events. If a handler throws, the bus logs the error and continues.
P1 Content Pipeline¶
The first shipped pipeline turns journal entries into publishable insights:
You write in Obsidian. Cadence watches, extracts, batches, and delivers — without being asked.
LinkedIn Pipeline¶
The LinWheel Publisher turns notes into LinkedIn drafts:
Write ::linkedin at the top of an Obsidian note. Cadence detects it, runs the content through LinWheel's analyze + reshape pipeline, and saves drafts to the LinWheel dashboard. You review and schedule from the UI.
Angles can be overridden via frontmatter:
---
linkedin_angles: [field_note, synthesizer]
---
::linkedin
Today I shipped a TypeScript SDK...
What's shipped¶
| Component | Status |
|---|---|
| Signal bus (in-memory, sequential) | Shipped |
| ObsidianWatcher source | Shipped |
| CronBridge source | Shipped |
| InsightExtractor responder | Shipped |
| InsightDigest responder | Shipped |
| TelegramNotifier responder | Shipped |
| TaskLogger responder | Shipped |
| LinWheelPublisher responder | Shipped |
| Gateway integration | Shipped |
| CLI commands | Planned |
Next steps¶
- Quick Start — Wire the P1 pipeline in 5 minutes
- Core Concepts — Signals, sources, responders in depth
- Configuration — All config options
- Signal Reference — Every signal type