Rich output protocol

Assistant output can carry a small set of delivery/render directives:

MEDIA: for attachment delivery
[[audio_as_voice]] for audio presentation hints
[[reply_to_current]] / [[reply_to:<id>]] for reply metadata
[embed ...] for Control UI rich rendering

Remote MEDIA: attachments must be public https: URLs. Plain http:, loopback, link-local, private, and internal hostnames are ignored as attachment directives; server-side media fetchers still enforce their own network guards.

Local MEDIA: attachments can use absolute paths, workspace-relative paths, or home-relative ~/ paths. They still pass through the agent file-read policy and media type checks before delivery.

<Warning> `MEDIA:` is parsed only as plain text. Wrapping the directive in Markdown formatting (bold, inline code, fenced code) prevents the parser from recognizing it, and the attachment is silently dropped from delivery.

Valid:

text

MEDIA:/workspace/image.png

Invalid (parsed as prose, no attachment delivered):

text

**MEDIA:/workspace/image.png**
`MEDIA:/workspace/image.png`
Here is your image: MEDIA:/workspace/image.png

Keep MEDIA: on its own line, in plain text, with no surrounding formatting. </Warning>

Plain Markdown image syntax stays text by default. Channels that intentionally map Markdown image replies to media attachments opt in at their outbound adapter; Telegram does this so ![alt](url) can still become a media reply.

These directives are separate. MEDIA: and reply/voice tags remain delivery metadata; [embed ...] is the web-only rich render path. Trusted tool-result media uses the same MEDIA: / [[audio_as_voice]] parser before delivery, so text tool outputs can still mark an audio attachment as a voice note.

When block streaming is enabled, MEDIA: remains single-delivery metadata for a turn. If the same media URL is sent in a streamed block and repeated in the final assistant payload, OpenClaw delivers the attachment once and strips the duplicate from the final payload.

`[embed ...]`

[embed ...] is the only agent-facing rich render syntax for the Control UI.

Self-closing example:

text

[embed ref="cv_123" title="Status" /]

Rules:

[view ...] is no longer valid for new output.
Embed shortcodes render in the assistant message surface only.
Only URL-backed embeds are rendered. Use ref="..." or url="...".
Block-form inline HTML embed shortcodes are not rendered.
The web UI strips the shortcode from visible text and renders the embed inline.
MEDIA: is not an embed alias and should not be used for rich embed rendering.

Stored rendering shape

The normalized/stored assistant content block is a structured canvas item:

json

{
  "type": "canvas",
  "preview": {
    "kind": "canvas",
    "surface": "assistant_message",
    "render": "url",
    "viewId": "cv_123",
    "url": "/__openclaw__/canvas/documents/cv_123/index.html",
    "title": "Status",
    "preferredHeight": 320
  }
}

Stored/rendered rich blocks use this canvas shape directly. present_view is not recognized.

[embed ...]

Stored rendering shape

Related

`[embed ...]`