Update NanoClaw

How it works

The /update-nanoclaw skill brings upstream improvements into your install without losing your customizations. It’s designed for the common case: you’ve cloned NanoClaw, added channels, tweaked behavior, and now the upstream repo has new features or fixes you want.

The skill runs in phases, and you can stop at any point.

Preflight. The skill checks that your working tree is clean — no uncommitted changes. If the upstream remote isn’t configured, it asks for the URL and adds it. Then it fetches the latest upstream commits.

Preview. Before touching any files, the skill shows what upstream changed since your last sync. It groups changes into categories — skills, source code, build/config, and other — so you can see which areas are affected. It also shows your local commits to highlight where conflicts are likely.

Choose your path. You pick how to apply the update:

• Full merge (default) — merges all upstream changes in one pass. Conflicts are resolved once.
• Selective cherry-pick — you pick specific upstream commits to apply. Useful when you only want certain fixes.
• Rebase — replays your local commits on top of upstream. Gives linear history but resolves conflicts per-commit.
• Abort — just view the changelog, change nothing.

Conflict preview. Before committing to a merge, the skill runs a dry-run to show exactly which files would conflict. You can still abort at this point.

Conflict resolution. For any conflicts, the skill opens only the conflicted files, resolves the markers, and preserves your intentional local changes. It doesn’t touch unrelated code.

Validation. After the merge, the skill runs npm run build and npm test to confirm everything compiles and passes.

Breaking changes. If the update includes entries marked [BREAKING] in the changelog, the skill shows each one and offers to run the recommended migration skills automatically.

Rollback

Every update creates a timestamped backup branch and tag before making changes. If something goes wrong — during the update or days later — you can roll back in one command:

git reset --hard pre-update-<hash>-<timestamp>

The exact command is printed at the end of every update run.

Tips

• You can run the skill just to preview changes without applying anything. Choose “Abort” at the selection step.
• If you haven’t customized NanoClaw much, the full merge is almost always clean. Cherry-pick and rebase are for heavily customized installs.
• After a successful update, restart the service for changes to take effect.
• The skill keeps token usage low by relying on git commands for diffing and only opening files that actually have conflicts.