Openclaw Health Checks

Skill: OpenClaw Health Checks

Changelog

• 2026-03-19: Initial creation

Overview

Systematic health check procedures for the OpenClaw deployment. These checks are run during Phase 1 of every heartbeat cycle.

Quick Health Check (30 seconds)

# One-liner health check
docker ps --filter name=openclaw --format "{{.Status}}" && \
df -h /data --output=pcent | tail -1 && \
docker logs --tail 5 openclaw-okny-openclaw-1 2>&1 | grep -i -c error

Full Health Check Suite

1. Container Status

docker ps --filter name=openclaw --format "table {{.Names}}\t{{.Status}}\t{{.Ports}}"

Expected: Container openclaw-okny-openclaw-1 shows "Up" with healthy uptime Failure: Container not listed → Critical, start immediately Failure: Status shows "Restarting" → Critical, check logs for crash loop

2. Disk Usage

df -h /data
du -sh /data/.openclaw/ 2>/dev/null
du -sh /data/.openclaw/workspace* 2>/dev/null

Thresholds:

• < 80% → ✅ Healthy
• 80-90% → ⚠️ Warning — plan cleanup
• > 90% → 🚨 Critical — clean immediately

Cleanup targets (safest first):

1. Old backup files: ls -la /data/.openclaw/openclaw.json.backup.*
2. Docker build cache: docker system prune -f
3. Old logs: docker logs output is managed by Docker

3. Memory Usage

free -h
docker stats --no-stream --format "table {{.Name}}\t{{.MemUsage}}\t{{.MemPerc}}" openclaw-okny-openclaw-1

Thresholds:

• < 70% → ✅ Healthy
• 70-90% → ⚠️ Warning — monitor trend
• > 90% → 🚨 Critical — restart container, investigate cause

4. Config Integrity

cat /data/.openclaw/openclaw.json | python3 -m json.tool > /dev/null 2>&1 && echo "✅ Config valid" || echo "🚨 Config INVALID"

Failure: Invalid JSON → Critical, restore from backup immediately

5. API Connectivity

# Test Anthropic API reachability
docker exec openclaw-okny-openclaw-1 curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" \
  https://api.anthropic.com/v1/messages \
  -H "x-api-key: test" \
  -H "anthropic-version: 2023-06-01" 2>/dev/null

Expected: 401 (API reachable, auth rejected as expected with test key) Failure: 000 or timeout → Network issue Failure: 403 → API key may be revoked

6. Process Health

docker exec openclaw-okny-openclaw-1 ps aux 2>/dev/null | head -20
docker logs --tail 5 openclaw-okny-openclaw-1 2>&1

Check for: Zombie processes, OOM kills, segfaults, abnormal process count

Health Report Format

📊 Health Check Results
├── Container: [✅/⚠️/🚨] [status details]
├── Disk: [✅/⚠️/🚨] [usage %]
├── Memory: [✅/⚠️/🚨] [usage %]
├── Config: [✅/🚨] [valid/invalid]
├── API: [✅/⚠️/🚨] [reachable/unreachable]
└── Processes: [✅/⚠️/🚨] [normal/abnormal]

Severity Summary

CRITICAL — Immediate action required:

• Container down or crash-looping
• Config invalid (JSON parse error or Zod validation failure)
• Auth broken (API key revoked or missing)
• Disk usage > 90%

WARNING — Monitor and plan remediation:

• Memory usage > 70%
• Disk usage > 80%
• Logs > 500MB accumulated
• Unexpected container restart
• Missing bot (expected agent not responding)

INFO — No action needed:

• Normal resource fluctuations
• Minor log warnings (nostr, autoSelectFamily, apply_patch)

Escalation Matrix