OpenClaw Gateway Resilience Guard#

Use this skill when a user wants to keep OpenClaw Gateway and message channels online after network drops, WSL sleep/resume, macOS/Windows wake events, long-lived connection failures, or recurring model-provider timeouts.

Install#

Linux, WSL, or macOS:

bash

bash install-watchdog.sh

The installer works with defaults. It prompts for the main channel probe URL when running interactively, but pressing Enter is enough for the default WeChat probe.

For unattended install:

bash

bash install-watchdog.sh --yes

For a custom channel:

bash

bash install-watchdog.sh --channel-url "https://your-channel.example.com/health"

Windows PowerShell:

powershell

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\install-watchdog.ps1

After install, open the standalone dashboard:

text

http://127.0.0.1:18790/

The dashboard is served by the watchdog process, not Gateway, so it remains the recovery entry when Gateway is down.

Optional Gateway-side bridge while Gateway is healthy:

bash

openclaw plugins install ./openclaw-plugin
openclaw plugins enable resilience-guard
openclaw gateway restart

Operate#

bash

systemctl --user status gateway-watchdog
journalctl --user -u gateway-watchdog -f
bash ~/.local/share/openclaw-gateway-watchdog/uninstall-watchdog.sh

On macOS, inspect launchctl print gui/$(id -u)/ai.clawhub.gateway-resilience-guard. On Windows, inspect Get-ScheduledTask -TaskName "OpenClaw Gateway Resilience Guard".

If user systemd is unavailable, the installer starts a direct background fallback and stores its pid under ~/.local/state/openclaw-gateway-watchdog/watchdog.pid.

Safety Model#

The watchdog restarts only after layered checks:

1. OpenClaw native health probes: openclaw gateway status --require-rpc, openclaw health --json --verbose, and openclaw status --deep when available.
2. Runtime diagnostics: openclaw models status plus openclaw logs --plain signal scanning for provider timeout, proxy/network, rate limit, auth, channel session, gateway degraded, config reload, and task runtime warnings.
3. Local gateway health URL/TCP and main channel URL fallbacks.
4. General network URLs to avoid restarting during whole-machine network failure.
5. Optional model-provider probe via openclaw agent --json; default action is evidence logging only.
6. Dashboard action token, backoff, and hourly restart limits to avoid restart storms.

Model probing is disabled by default because it consumes real provider quota. To diagnose provider timeouts, set MODEL_PROBE_ENABLED=1, keep MODEL_PROBE_ACTION=log, and inspect model-probe-history.jsonl the next day. Diagnostic log scanning is enabled by default, but OPENCLAW_DIAG_ACTION=log keeps it non-invasive unless the operator explicitly opts into a restart or custom command. Use the dashboard strategy buttons for common modes: observe, overnight diagnosis, channel recovery, and conservative circuit breaker.

Tell users to review ~/.config/openclaw-gateway-watchdog/watchdog.env before publishing, sharing logs, or reporting issues.