WeChat (微信)

Check on Rove and hand it work from the WeChat app on your phone.

You bind a WeChat bot to Rove once by scanning a QR code. After that, a message to the bot comes back with the state of your tasks, can be forwarded to a task's agent, or can start a new task. Rove also messages you when a task needs you, is ready for review, or has a PR ready to merge.

The bot uses Tencent's iLink Bot API, the same one the official @tencent-weixin/openclaw-weixin plugin uses. Rove talks to it directly; no other gateway process is involved.

What this needs

• A personal WeChat account on your phone.
• A running Rove daemon. Messages are fetched by the daemon, so nothing arrives while it is stopped. The TUI starts it; on a machine without the TUI open, run rove daemon start (it runs in the foreground — use a terminal multiplexer or a service manager to keep it up).

While a binding exists, the daemon does not stop itself when the last TUI closes, so it keeps answering. rove weixin logout removes that hold.

Bind

$ rove weixin login
Scan with WeChat (微信 → 扫一扫), then confirm on the phone:
█▀▀▀▀▀█ ▄▀ █▀▀▀▀▀█
…
Or open: https://…
Scanned — confirm on your phone…
Bound. Send the bot `help` from WeChat to try it.

1. Run rove weixin login in a terminal.
2. In WeChat, open 扫一扫 and scan the code. If the terminal cannot draw it, open the printed URL and scan that.
3. Confirm on the phone.

The code expires after a few minutes; Rove fetches a new one up to three times, then gives up. Run login again to re-bind, for example after WeChat ends the session. A daemon that is already running picks up a new binding within a few seconds; no restart is needed.

The WeChat account that scanned is the owner and is the only sender Rove answers by default.

What you can send

<id> is the six-character code status prints in front of each task (the end of its task id). Four or more trailing characters work as long as they match one task; if they match several, the reply lists them.

<repo> is the repository's directory name, such as rove for ~/code/rove. It must be a saved project or a repo that already has tasks. When two repos share a name, the reply asks for the full path.

send and add go through the same code as the rove api verbs, so a refusal there is the reply here, for example Failed (ENGINE_NOT_RUNNING): … has no live engine process.

Replies are kept short for a phone. A long reply is split into at most three messages; anything beyond that is cut and the last message says how many lines were dropped.

Notifications

Every 20 seconds the daemon checks every repo's tasks and messages you when a task moves into one of these:

• Needs you: a permission prompt, a usage limit that will not resume by itself, an error, or an engine that died without reporting.
• Ready for review: a report or finished turn nobody has looked at.
• Ready to merge: its PR is open and approved.

A task has to stay in the new state for two checks in a row before you hear about it. Tasks already in one of these states when the daemon starts are not announced.

The 24-hour limit

iLink only accepts a bot-initiated message once the person has written to the bot, and the session behind it goes stale. Rove applies its own rule on top: it sends a notification only if that person messaged the bot in the last 24 hours. Otherwise the notification is written to ~/.rove/weixin/undelivered.jsonl and the daemon log instead, and rove weixin status shows the count and the latest reason. Any message to the bot (even s) opens the window again.

The same log gets messages iLink refused, such as an expired session after Rove has already retried once without the stale session token.

Letting other people in

Messages from anyone other than the owner and the people you allow are dropped without a reply. rove weixin status lists the most recent refused senders by WeChat user id:

$ rove weixin status
Bound to bot 1a2b3c4d5e6f@im.bot since 2026-10-04T12:00:00.000Z
Daemon: running
Owner: o9xQ2mfE7rT@im.wechat
Allowed: owner only
Reply windows:
  o9xQ2mfE7rT@im.wechat  last message 3m ago — open
Refused senders (`rove weixin allow <id>` to let one in):
  wx7Lp3KdZ0a@im.wechat  1h ago

rove weixin allow <user-id>   # this person can now send commands
rove weixin deny <user-id>    # and no longer can

Allowed people get notifications too, under the same 24-hour rule.

Unbind

rove weixin logout

This deletes the credentials and the long-poll position. The undelivered log stays.

Limits

• Text only. Images, files and voice messages without a WeChat transcript get a "text messages only" reply.
• Direct messages only. A QR-bound bot is usually not delivered group chat events, so Rove ignores them.
• One bot per Rove home. login with a different WeChat account replaces the binding.
• Notifications are checked every 20 seconds, so a state can be up to about a minute old when it reaches you.
• Replies are in English.

Where things live

Under ~/.rove/weixin/ (or $ROVE_HOME_DIR/.rove/weixin/), directory mode 0700, files 0600:

The bot token is never written to the daemon log. Daemon log lines that mention a WeChat id show only its first eight characters.

Where the code lives

The channel is its own workspace package, packages/rove-weixin: the iLink client, QR login, the state files above, command handling, message formatting and notifications. It is bundled into the rove CLI at build time, so npm i -g @sma1lboy/rove includes it; it is not published on its own.

Rove itself only defines a generic chat-channel contract (packages/rove/src/channels/chat-channel.ts) and a registry that names the channel package (packages/rove/src/channels/registry.ts). The daemon starts every registered channel after it is listening and stays up while one asks it to. Dependencies point one way: rove-weixin uses Rove's public pieces (the daemon client, rove api verbs, the context snapshot); Rove never imports its internals.

bun --filter rove-weixin test        # protocol, routing and push tests, against a fake iLink server
bun --filter rove-weixin typecheck

Testing against a fake server

ROVE_WEIXIN_BASE_URL points rove weixin login at another iLink endpoint; the binding then keeps whatever base URL that server confirms. The repo ships a fake one for development:

PORT=18733 bun packages/rove-weixin/test/fake-ilink.ts &   # confirms any login
cd packages/rove
ROVE_WEIXIN_BASE_URL=http://127.0.0.1:18733 bun dev:sandbox --name wx run weixin login
bun dev:sandbox --name wx run daemon start &
curl -s localhost:18733/_inject -d '{"text":"status"}'   # a message from the owner
curl -s localhost:18733/_sends                            # what Rove replied

Checking a real phone

1. rove weixin login, scan, confirm. rove weixin status shows Bound and the owner id.
2. With the daemon running, send s to the bot. The reply starts with a count line such as Nothing needs you. 2 running.
3. Send send <id> say hi for a task from that list. The text appears in that task's engine tab and the bot answers Sent to <id> ….
4. Let a task hit a permission prompt. Within about a minute the bot sends Needs you: with that task.
5. From another WeChat account, message the bot. Nothing comes back, and the id appears under Refused senders in rove weixin status.
6. rove weixin logout. Within one poll (up to 35 seconds) the daemon log shows weixin: unbound — stopped polling.