Skill

Claude Watchdog 🐕

Monitor the Anthropic/Claude API for outages and latency spikes. Sends rich alerts to Telegram — no agent tokens consumed for status checks.

What It Does

Status Monitor (status-check.py)

Latency Probe (latency-probe.py)

Setup

Run the interactive setup script:

bash /path/to/skills/claude-watchdog/scripts/setup.sh

You'll need: 1. Telegram Bot Token — from @BotFather 2. Telegram Chat ID — send a message to your bot, then check https://api.telegram.org/bot/getUpdates 3. OpenClaw Gateway Token — run:

   python3 -c "from pathlib import Path; import json; print(json.load(open(Path.home() / '.openclaw/openclaw.json'))['gateway']['auth']['token'])"
   

The setup script writes config, installs cron jobs, and runs an initial check.

To uninstall (removes cron jobs, optionally config/state):

bash /path/to/skills/claude-watchdog/scripts/setup.sh --uninstall

Config

Stored in ~/.openclaw/skills/claude-watchdog/claude-watchdog.env. To reconfigure, either re-run setup.sh or edit this file directly — changes take effect on the next cron run (within 15 minutes).

TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN=...
TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID=...
OPENCLAW_GATEWAY_TOKEN=...
OPENCLAW_GATEWAY_PORT=18789
MONITOR_MODEL=sonnet
PROBE_MODEL=openclaw
PROBE_AGENT_ID=main

| Variable | Default | Description | |----------|---------|-------------| | TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN | *(required)* | Telegram bot token from @BotFather | | TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID | *(required)* | Target chat for alerts | | OPENCLAW_GATEWAY_TOKEN | *(required)* | Auth token for the local OpenClaw gateway | | OPENCLAW_GATEWAY_PORT | 18789 | Port the OpenClaw gateway listens on | | MONITOR_MODEL | sonnet | Model name to match in status incidents (e.g. "sonnet", "haiku") | | PROBE_MODEL | openclaw | Model alias sent to the gateway for latency probes. openclaw uses the gateway's default model routing | | PROBE_AGENT_ID | main | Value of the x-openclaw-agent-id header sent with probes | | FILTER_KEYWORDS | *(none)* | Comma-separated keywords to filter out of status alerts (e.g. "skills,Artifacts,Memory"). Empty = receive all alerts |

Scripts also accept these as environment variables (env file takes priority).

Security Note

The env file contains sensitive tokens (Telegram bot token, gateway token). The setup script sets permissions to 600 (owner-only read/write). If you create or edit the file manually, ensure restricted permissions:

chmod 600 ~/.openclaw/skills/claude-watchdog/claude-watchdog.env

Alert Examples

Status incident:

🟠 Anthropic Status: Partially Degraded Service
📌 Elevated error rates on Claude 3.5 Haiku (not our model)
Status: Investigating
Update: "We are investigating increased error rates..."
Components:
  🟠 API: partial outage
🔗 https://status.claude.com

Latency spike:

🟡 Anthropic API — High Latency Detected
Current: 12.3s
Baseline: 3.1s (median of last 19 samples)
Ratio: 4.0×
Slow responses are expected right now.

Recovery:

✅ Anthropic API — Latency Back to Normal
Current: 2.8s
Baseline: 3.1s
Was: 12.3s when alert fired

State & Logs

All state and log files are stored in ~/.openclaw/skills/claude-watchdog/:

| File | Purpose | |------|---------| | claude-watchdog-status.json | Status check state | | claude-watchdog-latency.json | Latency probe state & samples | | claude-watchdog-status.log | Status check log | | claude-watchdog-latency.log | Latency probe log |

Tuning Thresholds

Edit constants at the top of latency-probe.py:

| Constant | Default | Meaning | |----------|---------|---------| | ALERT_MULTIPLIER | 2.5 | Alert if latency > N× baseline median | | ALERT_HARD_FLOOR | 10.0s | Always alert above this absolute threshold | | RECOVER_MULTIPLIER | 1.5 | Clear alert when below N× baseline | | BASELINE_WINDOW | 20 | Rolling sample window size | | BASELINE_MIN_SAMPLES | 5 | Minimum samples before alerting starts | | PROBE_TIMEOUT | 45s | Give up on probe after this long |

Requirements

Stored in ~/.openclaw/skills/claude-watchdog/claude-watchdog.env. To reconfigure, either re-run setup.sh or edit this file directly — changes take effect on the next cron run (within 15 minutes).

TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN=...
TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID=...
OPENCLAW_GATEWAY_TOKEN=...
OPENCLAW_GATEWAY_PORT=18789
MONITOR_MODEL=sonnet
PROBE_MODEL=openclaw
PROBE_AGENT_ID=main

| Variable | Default | Description | |----------|---------|-------------| | TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN | *(required)* | Telegram bot token from @BotFather | | TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID | *(required)* | Target chat for alerts | | OPENCLAW_GATEWAY_TOKEN | *(required)* | Auth token for the local OpenClaw gateway | | OPENCLAW_GATEWAY_PORT | 18789 | Port the OpenClaw gateway listens on | | MONITOR_MODEL | sonnet | Model name to match in status incidents (e.g. "sonnet", "haiku") | | PROBE_MODEL | openclaw | Model alias sent to the gateway for latency probes. openclaw uses the gateway's default model routing | | PROBE_AGENT_ID | main | Value of the x-openclaw-agent-id header sent with probes | | FILTER_KEYWORDS | *(none)* | Comma-separated keywords to filter out of status alerts (e.g. "skills,Artifacts,Memory"). Empty = receive all alerts |

Scripts also accept these as environment variables (env file takes priority).

Security Note

The env file contains sensitive tokens (Telegram bot token, gateway token). The setup script sets permissions to 600 (owner-only read/write). If you create or edit the file manually, ensure restricted permissions:

chmod 600 ~/.openclaw/skills/claude-watchdog/claude-watchdog.env