ClawHub Smart Updater Skill 🔄

Description

Intelligent ClawHub skill updater with smart merge capabilities. Preserves local modifications, detects conflicts, and provides detailed merge recommendations instead of blindly overwriting files.

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when:

• You have locally modified skills from ClawHub
• You want to update skills without losing your changes
• You need conflict detection and merge recommendations
• You want automatic backups before updates
• You prefer safe, conservative updates over risky auto-updates

Key Differences from auto-updater

Installation

# Install via ClawHub
clawhub install clawhub-smart-updater

# The skill installs:
# - smart-update.py (main updater script)
# - restore-backup.py (rollback tool)
# - config.json (configuration)

Usage

Quick Start

# Run smart update check
python skills/clawhub-smart-updater/smart-update.py

# This will:
# 1. Check all installed skills for updates
# 2. Backup current versions
# 3. Download new versions to temp
# 4. Compare and categorize changes
# 5. Generate report with recommendations

Command Line Options

# Dry run (no changes)
python smart-update.py --dry-run

# Update specific skill
python smart-update.py --slug image-with-comfyui

# Force update (skip conflict detection)
python smart-update.py --force

# Verbose output
python smart-update.py --verbose

# Cleanup old backups
python smart-update.py --cleanup-backups --older-than 7

OpenClaw Cron Integration

The skill is designed for OpenClaw cron jobs:

{
  "cron": {
    "jobs": [
      {
        "name": "Weekly Smart Update",
        "schedule": {
          "kind": "cron",
          "expr": "0 10 * * 1",
          "tz": "Europe/Prague"
        },
        "payload": {
          "kind": "agentTurn",
          "message": "Run smart-update.py --report and send summary to user"
        },
        "delivery": {
          "channel": "whatsapp",
          "to": "<YOUR_PHONE_NUMBER>"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

How It Works

1. Discovery Phase

clawhub list → Get installed skills
clawhub inspect <slug> → Get latest version
Compare: local_version vs latest_version

2. Backup Phase

Copy-Item skills/<slug> skills/<slug>.backup-YYYY-MM-DD -Recurse

3. Download Phase

clawhub inspect <slug> --files --output temp/<slug>-new

4. Analysis Phase

• Hash all files (SHA-256)
• Compare with original ClawHub hashes
• Identify locally modified files
• Categorize changes:
  • Safe: Docs, configs, untouched files
  • Conflict: Code files modified both upstream and locally

5. Merge Phase

• Apply safe changes automatically
• Flag conflicts for manual review
• Generate diff files
• Create merge report

6. Report Phase

Generate detailed report:

• What was updated
• What needs review
• Security warnings
• Statistics

Configuration

config.json

{
  "backup": {
    "enabled": true,
    "retention_days": 7,
    "directory": "skills/.backups"
  },
  "conflict": {
    "auto_backup": true,
    "generate_diff": true,
    "require_manual_review": true
  },
  "notification": {
    "enabled": true,
    "channel": "whatsapp",
    "target": "<YOUR_PHONE_NUMBER>",
    "on_conflict_only": false
  },
  "update": {
    "auto_apply_safe": true,
    "auto_apply_conflicts": false,
    "ignore_whitespace": true
  }
}

Output Examples

Success Report

## Smart Update Report - 2026-05-07

### ✅ Auto-Updated (2 skills):
- image-with-comfyui: 1.4.8 → 1.4.9 (docs only)
- moltbook-interact: 1.0.0 → 1.0.1 (bugfix)

### ⚠️ Manual Review Required (1 skill):
- fusion-bridge: 1.0.2 → 1.0.3
  - Conflict in main.py (lines 45-67)
  - See: temp/fusion-bridge/diff.txt

### Stats:
- Checked: 23 skills
- Updated: 2
- Conflicts: 1
- Backups cleaned: 3

Conflict Report

### ⚠️ fusion-bridge: Conflict Detected

**Local changes:**
- Modified: main.py (custom error handling)
- Modified: SKILL.md (Czech translations)

**Upstream changes:**
- Fixed: main.py (bugfix in connect() function)
- Updated: README.md (new examples)

**Conflict:**
Both local and upstream modified main.py lines 45-67

**Recommendation:**
Manual merge required. Upstream bugfix is important, but preserve custom error handling.

**Actions:**
1. Review: temp/fusion-bridge/diff.txt
2. Merge manually
3. Run: python smart-update.py --accept fusion-bridge

Safety Features

Backup System

• Automatic pre-update backups
• Dated backup folders
• Configurable retention (default: 7 days)
• Easy rollback with restore-backup.py

Conflict Detection

• SHA-256 content hashing
• Tracks which files you've modified
• Intelligent categorization
• Diff generation for conflicts

Security

• VirusTotal integration (warns on SUSPICIOUS)
• Dependency change detection
• Permission audit
• No blind overwrites

Troubleshooting

"Permission denied" error

Cause: File locked by editor or process

Solution:

# Close editors using skill files
# Or force unlock
python smart-update.py --force-unlock

Backup directory too large

Cause: Old backups accumulating

Solution:

python smart-update.py --cleanup-backups --older-than 7

False positive conflicts

Cause: Whitespace changes detected

Solution:

python smart-update.py --ignore-whitespace

Files Included

• smart-update.py - Main updater script
• restore-backup.py - Rollback tool
• config.json - Configuration
• SKILL.md - This documentation
• README.md - Extended documentation

Requirements

• Python 3.10+
• ClawHub CLI installed
• Git (optional, for advanced diff)
• Windows PowerShell (for backup scripts)

License

MIT-0 - Free to use, modify, and redistribute without attribution.

Author

Klepeto 🦞 (vilda)
Created: 2026-05-07
Tested on: Windows 11, Python 3.12

Changelog

1.0.0 (2026-05-07)

• Initial release
• Smart merge with conflict detection
• Automatic backup system
• Diff generation
• OpenClaw cron integration
• WhatsApp reporting