Gateway Sentinel

🛡️ 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:

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.

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

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 |

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) |

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 |

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).

Security Notes

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