A two-tier OpenClaw setup: an expensive Advisor model plans and reviews, a cheap Executor model runs the work. Based on Anthropic's official "Advisor Strategy" pattern, adapted for OpenClaw 2026.4.11.
Anthropic announced the Advisor Strategy for the Claude Platform on April 8, 2026. This config ports the same idea to local and self-hosted OpenClaw agents — use Opus 4.6 as the advisor, and Sonnet 4.6 / GLM-5.1 / Minimax M2.7 / local Gemma as the executor.
┌────────────────────┐
│ User / Trigger │
└─────────┬──────────┘
│ task
▼
┌───────────────────────┐
│ Executor (cheap) │ runs tool calls,
│ Sonnet 4.6 / GLM-5.1 │ writes code, edits
│ /Gemma local │ files, drives the loop
└────┬─────────────▲────┘
│ │
"I'm stuck / about to │ compact
do something risky" │ checklist
▼ │
┌───────────────────────┐
│ Advisor (expensive) │ plans, reviews,
│ Opus 4.6 │ flags risk,
│ │ never executes
└───────────────────────┘
The Advisor is a planner and reviewer. It sees a summary of the task, returns a compact checklist, and then steps out of the loop. The Executor does all the tool calls, file edits, and iteration. The Executor calls the Advisor at critical decision points only — not every step.
Reddit threads on r/openclaw suggest roughly 60–80% cost savings vs. running Opus end-to-end, for tasks where the executor model is competent enough to follow a plan without hand-holding.
| Scenario | Use Advisor-Hybrid? |
|---|---|
| Long refactors across many files | Yes — Opus plans, Sonnet edits |
| Research + synthesis (50+ sources) | Yes — Opus picks strategy, GLM-5.1 reads |
| One-shot "write me a function" | No — single Sonnet call is cheaper |
| Deeply novel / research-level problems | No — use Opus end-to-end |
| Cron jobs and batch work | Yes — cost dominates quality tradeoff |
| Interactive pair-programming | Maybe — latency of two-hop matters |
Rule of thumb: if the task has planning complexity but execution is mechanical, hybrid wins. If both planning and execution are hard, run a single Opus session.
OpenClaw's agent CLI already supports agent-to-agent calls — any agent can invoke another via the openclaw agent command inside its own session. The advisor-hybrid config uses that mechanism: the Executor has a documented instruction to shell out to the Advisor when it hits a checkpoint.
Two SOUL.md files live in this directory:
| File | Agent | Model | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
ADVISOR.md |
advisor-opus |
opus-4.6 | Plans, reviews, flags risk. Never executes. |
EXECUTOR-SOUL.md |
executor-hybrid |
sonnet-4.6 (or GLM-5.1 / Gemma) | Does the work. Consults advisor at checkpoints. |
The Executor SOUL is written in the Orion style (structured markdown system prompt with Identity / Responsibilities / Behavioral Guidelines) so it slots into any existing OpenClaw setup without reformatting.
# Create the two agent directories
mkdir -p ~/.openclaw/agents/advisor-opus
mkdir -p ~/.openclaw/agents/executor-hybrid
# Copy the SOUL files
cp configs/advisor-hybrid/ADVISOR.md ~/.openclaw/agents/advisor-opus/SOUL.md
cp configs/advisor-hybrid/EXECUTOR-SOUL.md ~/.openclaw/agents/executor-hybrid/SOUL.mdEdit ~/.openclaw/agents/advisor-opus/config.json:
{
"model": "anthropic/claude-opus-4-6",
"max_tokens": 4096,
"tools": []
}Note "tools": [] — the advisor has no tool access by design. It can only return text.
Edit ~/.openclaw/agents/executor-hybrid/config.json:
{
"model": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6",
"max_tokens": 8192,
"tools": ["bash", "edit_file", "read_file", "openclaw_agent"]
}Swap claude-sonnet-4-6 for glm-5.1, minimax-m2.7, or an Ollama model if you want a cheaper executor. The openclaw_agent tool is what lets the executor call the advisor.
openclaw agent --agent executor-hybrid --message "Refactor utils/parser.js to use async/await"You should see the executor call openclaw agent --agent advisor-opus once at the start (for a plan), then run its edits, then optionally call the advisor again at the end for a review.
For batch jobs, trigger the executor directly — it'll pull the advisor in as needed:
# Daily refactor pass
0 6 * * * openclaw agent --agent executor-hybrid --message "Run weekly tech-debt cleanup from tech-debt.md"Sample scenario: 1000 planning-heavy tasks/day, average task = 15K input tokens + 3K output tokens.
| Item | Tokens | Rate (2026.4) | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input | 15K × 1000 = 15M | $15 / M | $225 |
| Output | 3K × 1000 = 3M | $75 / M | $225 |
| Daily | $450 | ||
| Monthly | ~$13,500 |
Assume the advisor is called twice per task on average (plan + review), ~2K input / ~500 output each time. The executor handles the rest.
| Item | Tokens | Rate (2026.4) | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Advisor input | 4K × 1000 = 4M | $15 / M | $60 |
| Advisor output | 1K × 1000 = 1M | $75 / M | $75 |
| Executor input | 15K × 1000 = 15M | $3 / M | $45 |
| Executor output | 3K × 1000 = 3M | $15 / M | $45 |
| Daily | $225 | ||
| Monthly | ~$6,750 |
Roughly half the cost in this scenario. Swap the executor for GLM-5.1 or Minimax M2.7 and the executor line drops another order of magnitude — community reports on Reddit cite 60–80% total savings at that point.
Rates above are illustrative — always check live pricing before budgeting real workloads.
- Don't let the executor ping the advisor on every step. The cheapest way to ruin the economics is to turn "consult advisor at checkpoints" into "consult advisor before every tool call." The Executor SOUL explicitly bounds this — read it before you tune it.
- Batch advice requests. If the executor is about to do five related things, it should ask the advisor once with a 5-item checklist, not five times.
- Advisor has no tools. Give it read-only context in the prompt. If you give it tools, it stops being an advisor and starts being a second executor — costs spike.
- Context window matters. When the executor asks for advice, it should send a compact summary of state (what's been tried, what failed), not a raw transcript. Dumping 50K tokens of history into Opus every checkpoint kills the savings.
- Don't use hybrid for trivial tasks. The two-hop overhead isn't worth it for "rename this variable."
- Local executors drift more. GLM-5.1 and Gemma executors benefit from more-frequent advisor checkpoints than Sonnet 4.6. Tune checkpoint frequency per model.
- Logging. Log every advisor call with token counts. Community reports of "hybrid didn't save me money" almost always trace back to unbounded advisor calls nobody noticed.
- Anthropic Advisor Strategy announcement — official launch for the Claude Platform, April 2026 (see r/ClaudeAI top post "We're bringing the advisor strategy to the Claude Platform").
- r/openclaw community thread — "Running agents on a cheap model + using Claude Code as an 'advisor' on your subscription" — early adaptation of the pattern to OpenClaw, where this config started.
- @akshay_pachaar OpenClaw-RL — related work on reinforcement-learning a small executor against a larger critic. Different training-time approach, same "big brain advises, small brain executes" intuition.
configs/ollama/README.md— if you want the executor to run fully localagents/productivity/orion/SOUL.md— the style the Executor SOUL is modeled on