First chat

Choose a model, set effort or Fast mode, and understand how sessions map to agents.

The desktop composer talks to the sand gateway. Model selection is stored in openbot-platform/model-selection.json (mode 0600) as a default or per-session id of the form provider/model.

Pick a model

Open the model pill beside send (desktop) or the model select (web chat).
Connect a subscription or API key if the provider shows Connect.
Choose a cloud model or a local ollama/... model. Selecting Ollama starts openclaw-ollama; selecting cloud stops it.
Set as default to persist across sessions.

Effort and Fast

Effort maps to openclaw agent --thinking low|medium|high. Fast mode prepends the OpenClaw /fast on channel directive to the message (there is no --fast CLI flag).

Timeouts

Situation	Default
Ollama models	300s (`OPENBOT_CHAT_TIMEOUT_OLLAMA`)
Other providers	120s (`OPENBOT_CHAT_TIMEOUT_CLOUD`)
No model selected	180s

Streaming: send Accept: text/event-stream or {"stream":true} on POST /open-bot/chat. The CLI still returns one JSON object; SSE keeps the tunnel alive with heartbeats.