🛡️ OpenClaw Guardian

A battle-hardened watchdog that keeps your OpenClaw gateway running — and tells you when it can't.

What It Does

OpenClaw Guardian runs as a background service and continuously monitors the OpenClaw gateway using two independent health signals. When the gateway goes down, it works through an escalating repair sequence before entering a cooldown and waiting for manual help. Every significant event is logged and sent to your configured alert channel(s).

Health Check Strategy (graduated)

1. CLI check — openclaw gateway status (the authoritative signal)
2. HTTP fallback — curl http://localhost:${OPENCLAW_PORT}/health (5s timeout)
3. Both must fail before the guardian considers the gateway truly down

Repair Strategy (escalating)

Level	Action	Trigger
1 — Restart	openclaw gateway restart	First failure
2 — Doctor Fix	openclaw doctor --fix → openclaw gateway start	After Level 1 fails
3 — Git Rollback	Stash → reset to last stable commit → pop stash	After GUARDIAN_MAX_REPAIR failures, only if GUARDIAN_ENABLE_ROLLBACK=true
Cooldown	Sleep GUARDIAN_COOLDOWN seconds	After all levels exhausted

Note: Level 3 rollback is off by default and requires explicit opt-in via GUARDIAN_ENABLE_ROLLBACK=true. Even then, it always stashes uncommitted work before resetting — your changes are never silently discarded.

Alerting

Guardian supports both Telegram and Discord simultaneously. If neither is configured, it runs in log-only mode.

Alert events:

• Guardian started / stopped
• Gateway down detected
• Each repair attempt (with level)
• Repair success / failure
• Rollback triggered
• All repairs exhausted (cooldown entered)

Daily Snapshots

Once per calendar day, guardian runs git add -A && git commit in your workspace. It respects .gitignore, so secrets you've excluded stay excluded. Commit message format: guardian: daily snapshot YYYY-MM-DD.

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Quick Start

1. Configure environment variables

Create ~/.openclaw/guardian.env (or export in your shell profile):

# Required for alerts — set at least one
export GUARDIAN_TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN="bot123456:ABC..."
export GUARDIAN_TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID="-1001234567890"
# OR
export GUARDIAN_DISCORD_WEBHOOK_URL="https://discord.com/api/webhooks/..."

# Optional tuning
export GUARDIAN_CHECK_INTERVAL=30
export GUARDIAN_MAX_REPAIR=3
export GUARDIAN_COOLDOWN=600
export GUARDIAN_ENABLE_ROLLBACK=false  # set true to enable git rollback
export GUARDIAN_WORKSPACE="$HOME/.openclaw/workspace"
export GUARDIAN_LOG="/tmp/openclaw-guardian.log"
export OPENCLAW_PORT=3578

2. Install as a system service

# macOS or Linux — auto-detects
./scripts/install-guardian.sh

# With a custom log path
GUARDIAN_LOG=/var/log/openclaw-guardian.log ./scripts/install-guardian.sh

3. Verify it's running

# macOS
launchctl list | grep openclaw

# Linux
systemctl --user status openclaw-guardian

# Both
tail -f /tmp/openclaw-guardian.log

4. Run manually (testing / foreground)

# Source your config first
source ~/.openclaw/guardian.env

# Run guardian in the foreground (Ctrl-C to stop)
./scripts/guardian.sh

5. Uninstall

./scripts/uninstall-guardian.sh

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Environment Variable Reference

Variable	Default	Description
GUARDIAN_CHECK_INTERVAL	30	Seconds between health checks
GUARDIAN_MAX_REPAIR	3	Max Level 1+2 attempts before Level 3
GUARDIAN_COOLDOWN	600	Cooldown sleep (seconds) after all repairs fail
GUARDIAN_ENABLE_ROLLBACK	false	Enable Level 3 git rollback (off by default)
GUARDIAN_LOG	/tmp/openclaw-guardian.log	Log file path (rotates at 1 MB)
GUARDIAN_WORKSPACE	$HOME/.openclaw/workspace	Path to the OpenClaw workspace git repo
GUARDIAN_TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN	(unset)	Telegram Bot API token
GUARDIAN_TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID	(unset)	Telegram chat or channel ID
GUARDIAN_DISCORD_WEBHOOK_URL	(unset)	Discord incoming webhook URL
OPENCLAW_PORT	(auto-detected)	Gateway HTTP port — auto-parsed from openclaw gateway status if not set

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File Layout

skills/openclaw-guardian/
├── SKILL.md                    ← this file
└── scripts/
    ├── guardian.sh             ← main watchdog (run continuously)
    ├── install-guardian.sh     ← sets up launchd / systemd service
    └── uninstall-guardian.sh   ← clean removal

Runtime files (created automatically, not committed):

File	Purpose
/tmp/openclaw-guardian.lock	Single-instance lockfile containing PID
/tmp/openclaw-guardian-last-snapshot	Date of last successful daily snapshot
/tmp/openclaw-guardian.log	Current log (rotated to .log.1 at 1 MB)

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How It Improves on myclaw-guardian

Issue in myclaw-guardian	Fix in openclaw-guardian
git reset --hard without stashing — could silently destroy uncommitted work	Always git stash before any reset; git stash pop to restore regardless of outcome
Process detection via pgrep — fragile, can match wrong process	Uses openclaw gateway status (the actual CLI) as primary, with HTTP fallback
No lockfile — multiple instances could run simultaneously	/tmp/openclaw-guardian.lock with PID written; stale lock detection on startup
Only Discord alerts	Supports Telegram and Discord simultaneously; log-only if neither configured
Level 3 rollback always enabled — risky default	Level 3 off by default (GUARDIAN_ENABLE_ROLLBACK=false), explicit opt-in required
No graduated health checking	Two independent checks: CLI → HTTP; both must fail before declaring gateway down
No cooldown after exhausting repairs	Configurable cooldown (GUARDIAN_COOLDOWN) before resuming monitoring

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Logging

Logs are timestamped and structured:

[2026-03-05 11:30:00] [INFO] OpenClaw Guardian started (PID 12345)
[2026-03-05 11:30:30] [INFO] Gateway healthy
[2026-03-05 11:31:00] [WARN] CLI status check failed — trying HTTP health endpoint
[2026-03-05 11:31:05] [WARN] Gateway health check FAILED
[2026-03-05 11:31:05] [INFO] ALERT: 🔴 Gateway is DOWN — beginning repair sequence
[2026-03-05 11:31:05] [INFO] Repair Level 1: restarting gateway
[2026-03-05 11:31:35] [INFO] Level 1 repair succeeded

Log rotates automatically when it exceeds 1 MB (one backup: .log.1).

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Security Notes

• No secrets in git — daily snapshots use git add -A which respects .gitignore. Ensure your .gitignore excludes .env, *.key, etc.
• Level 3 rollback is destructive by nature — only enable it if you understand git reset semantics and have tested your .gitignore coverage.
• Alert tokens in env only — never put GUARDIAN_TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN or webhook URLs in files that get committed.