Openclaw Management

OpenClaw Management Suite

Overview

Claude Code as an external management layer for OpenClaw. The "external neurosurgeon" pattern: the platform can't reliably manage itself, so CC operates from outside.

Skills included:

1. Health monitoring (pure bash, $0)
2. Auto-repair (safe fixes only)
3. Doctor dispatch (scheduled diagnosis)
4. Free fleet routing ($0 continuous operation)
5. Upgrade management (backup → update → verify → rollback)

Quick Start

# Run health check now
/openclaw-manage health

# Start autonomous monitoring
/openclaw-manage auto

# Full diagnosis
/openclaw-manage doctor

# View status
/openclaw-manage status

Commands

/openclaw-manage health — Quick Health Check

Run these checks and report results:

# Gateway
curl -sf --max-time 3 http://localhost:18789/health 2>/dev/null | grep -q '"ok":true' \
  && echo "Gateway: OK" || echo "Gateway: DOWN"

# PM2 services
pm2 jlist 2>/dev/null | python3 -c "
import json,sys
data=json.load(sys.stdin) for d in data if d['pm2_env']['status']=='online')
total=len(data)
print(f'PM2: {online}/{total} online')
for d in data:
  if d['pm2_env']['status'] not in ('online','stopped'):
    print(f'  WARNING: {d[\"name\"]} is {d[\"pm2_env\"][\"status\"]}')
" 2>/dev/null

# Disk
df -h /System/Volumes/Data | tail -1 | awk '{print "Disk: " $3 " used / " $4 " free (" $5 ")"}'

# OpenClaw data size
du -sh ~/.openclaw/ 2>/dev/null | awk '{print "OpenClaw data: " $1}'

# Channel status
openclaw channels status --probe 2>&1 | grep -E "works|DOWN|warning"

/openclaw-manage doctor — Full Diagnosis

# Run openclaw's built-in doctor
openclaw doctor 2>&1

# Check cron jobs for errors
openclaw cron list 2>&1

# Detailed PM2 status
pm2 jlist 2>/dev/null | python3 -c "
import json,sys
data=json.load(sys.stdin)
for d in sorted(data, key=lambda x: x['name']):
  name=d['name']
  status=d['pm2_env']['status']
  restarts=d['pm2_env']['restart_time']
  print(f'{name:30s} {status:10s} restarts:{restarts}')
" 2>/dev/null

# Memory usage
du -sh ~/.openclaw/memory/ ~/.openclaw/agents/*/sessions/ 2>/dev/null | sort -rh | head -10

# Cost check (if script exists)
python3 ~/clawd/scripts/cost-by-agent.py 2>/dev/null || echo "Cost script not found"

/openclaw-manage auto — Enable Autonomous Monitoring

Set up cron jobs for continuous health monitoring:

# Create the quick-check script
cat > ~/clawd/tools/openclaw-doctor-quick.sh << 'SCRIPT'
#!/bin/bash
set -uo pipefail
STATUS="OK"; ISSUES=""; FIXES=""

# Gateway
curl -sf --max-time 3 http://localhost:18789/health 2>/dev/null | grep -q '"ok":true' \
  || { STATUS="CRITICAL"; ISSUES="$ISSUES gateway-down"; }

# PM2 (auto-restart safe services)
ERRORED=$(pm2 jlist 2>/dev/null | python3 -c "
import json,sys
skip={'freqtrade','port-guard','vault-sync','vault-git-backup','gateway-watchdog'}
for d in json.load(sys.stdin):
  if d['pm2_env']['status']=='errored' and d['name'] not in skip:
    print(d['name'])
" 2>/dev/null)
for svc in $ERRORED; do
  pm2 restart "$svc" 2>/dev/null; sleep 2
  FIXES="$FIXES restarted:$svc"
done

# Disk
DISK=$(df -h /System/Volumes/Data | tail -1 | awk '{print $5}' | tr -d '%')
[ "${DISK:-0}" -gt 90 ] && { STATUS="ALERT"; ISSUES="$ISSUES disk:${DISK}%"; }

# Log
echo "$(date +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S) $STATUS $ISSUES $FIXES" >> /tmp/openclaw-health.log

# Alert on failure
[ "$STATUS" != "OK" ] && openclaw message send --channel discord \
  --target {COMMS_LOG_CHANNEL_ID} --message "[Doctor] $STATUS: $ISSUES $FIXES" --silent 2>/dev/null
SCRIPT
chmod +x ~/clawd/tools/openclaw-doctor-quick.sh

# Schedule via OpenClaw cron (or system cron)
openclaw cron create --name "doctor-quick" --schedule "*/15 * * * *" \
  --command "bash ~/clawd/tools/openclaw-doctor-quick.sh" 2>/dev/null \
  || echo "Add to crontab manually: */15 * * * * bash ~/clawd/tools/openclaw-doctor-quick.sh"

/openclaw-manage status — Current State

echo "=== OpenClaw Management Status ==="
echo ""

# Gateway
openclaw gateway status 2>/dev/null | grep -E "Runtime|RPC|Listening"
echo ""

# Agent count
AGENTS=$(openclaw agents list 2>/dev/null | grep -c "^-")
echo "Agents: $AGENTS"

# Channel count
CHANNELS=$(openclaw channels status --probe 2>/dev/null | grep -c "works")
echo "Channels: $CHANNELS connected"

# Health log (last 5 entries)
echo ""
echo "Recent health checks:"
tail -5 /tmp/openclaw-health.log 2>/dev/null || echo "No health log yet"

Free LLM Routing

For autonomous tasks, use free models to achieve $0 operation:

Configure in OpenClaw:

{
  "model": {
    "primary": "groq/meta-llama/llama-4-scout-17b-16e-instruct",
    "fallbacks": ["ollama/llama3.2"]
  }
}

Safe Auto-Fix Rules

Auto-fix (no human needed):

• PM2 service restart (critical services only)
• Session cleanup (older than 7 days)
• Log rotation (compress logs older than 3 days)
• Memory DB optimization (SQLite VACUUM)

Alert only (needs human):

• Gateway restart
• Config file changes
• Agent creation/removal
• Credential issues
• Data deletion

Key Insight

The OpenClaw gateway communicates via WebSocket RPC at ws://127.0.0.1:18789. HTTP only serves the dashboard. The only HTTP endpoint is GET /health. All programmatic access must use the openclaw CLI (which handles WebSocket internally).

Do NOT use fetch() or curl for API calls to the gateway. Use openclaw message send, openclaw agents list, etc.

Requirements

• OpenClaw installed and running
• openclaw CLI in PATH
• PM2 for service management
• Python 3 (for JSON parsing in bash scripts)