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Scout is the QA Tester of your Clawup. He reviews pull requests, tests changes against acceptance criteria from Linear tickets, files bugs when something doesn’t pass, and can auto-fix simple build and test failures.

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What Scout Does

  • Receives tickets via the Linear plugin queue when they enter “Started”
  • Reviews PRs against Linear ticket acceptance criteria
  • Runs builds and test suites to validate changes
  • Auto-fixes simple build or test failures and retries
  • Reports results back to Linear — approves PRs or requests changes with specific gaps
  • Resolves PR review comments by parsing, applying fixes, and pushing (via heartbeat)

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How Work Gets Triggered

Scout’s work comes from two sources:

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Queue Handler (Linear Plugin)

When a ticket moves to “Started” in Linear, the plugin adds it to Scout’s queue and triggers the tester-queue-handler skill:
  1. View the ticket — read acceptance criteria, definition of done, test cases, and linked PR
  2. Find and checkout the PR — if no PR is linked, ask the assignee to link one
  3. Review against acceptance criteria — if requirements are unmet, request changes on the PR with specific gaps and return
  4. Run build and tests — auto-detect package manager, run install, build, test (and e2e if present)
    • Pass — approve the PR and confirm on the ticket
    • Fail — invoke Claude Code to apply a minimal fix, re-run once
  5. Handle persistent failure — if still failing after retry, request changes with an error summary

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Heartbeat (Polling)

Scout’s heartbeat fires every minute and handles PR review comment resolution — scanning open PRs for unresolved review comments and using the pr-review-resolver skill to parse comments, apply fixes via Claude Code, and push.

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Skills

SkillPurpose
tester-queue-handlerEnd-to-end ticket verification — reviews PRs, runs tests, reports results
pr-review-resolverParse PR review comments, apply fixes via Claude Code, and push

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Workspace Files

Scout’s behavior is defined by workspace files injected into ~/.openclaw/workspace/ during bootstrap:
FileWhat It Does
SOUL.mdCore personality — approach, values, superpowers, boundaries. Defines who Scout is as a QA tester.
IDENTITY.mdName, role label, emoji, avatar metadata.
HEARTBEAT.mdPeriodic checklist — bootstrap detection and PR review comment resolution.
TOOLS.mdTool-specific notes and common commands for Scout’s workflow.
He also receives the shared base files (USER.md, AGENTS.md, BOOTSTRAP.md) that all agents share.

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Configuration

Scout uses the tester identity: 
- name: agent-tester
  displayName: Scout
  role: tester
  identity: "https://github.com/stepandel/army-identities#tester"
  volumeSize: 30
  plugins:
    - openclaw-linear
    - slack
  deps:
    - gh
    - brave-search
FieldDefaultNotes
identityarmy-identities#testerBuilt-in QA tester identity
volumeSize30 GBPersistent storage — Scout checks out PR branches but doesn’t need as much space
modelClaude Opus 4.6Set in identity.yaml
codingAgentclaude-codeSet in identity.yaml

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Customization

You can customize Scout by forking the army-identities repo and modifying the tester/ directory, or by creating a new identity from scratch. Point your manifest at the new identity source: 
identity: "https://github.com/your-org/your-identities#tester"
See Identities & Customization for details.