The ops layer for OpenClaw. Deploy in minutes. Stay running for months.
Observability. Reliability. Agent discipline. Zero SSH rescue missions.
AlphaClaw wraps OpenClaw with a convenient setup wizard, self-healing watchdog, Git-backed rollback, and full browser-based observability. Ships with anti-drift prompt hardening to keep your agent disciplined, and simplifies integrations (e.g. Google Workspace, Telegram Topics) so you can manage everything from one UI instead of config files.
First deploy to first message in under five minutes.
Platform: AlphaClaw currently targets Docker/Linux deployments. macOS local development is not yet supported.
- Setup UI: Password-protected web dashboard for onboarding, configuration, and day-to-day management.
- Guided Onboarding: Step-by-step setup wizard — model selection, provider credentials, GitHub repo, channel pairing.
- Gateway Manager: Spawns, monitors, restarts, and proxies the OpenClaw gateway as a managed child process.
- Watchdog: Crash detection, crash-loop recovery, auto-repair (
openclaw doctor --fix), and Telegram/Discord notifications. - Channel Orchestration: Telegram and Discord bot pairing, credential sync, and a guided wizard for splitting Telegram into multi-threaded topic groups as your usage grows.
- Webhooks: Named webhook endpoints with per-hook transform modules, request logging, and payload inspection.
- Google Workspace: OAuth integration for Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Tasks, Contacts, and Meet.
- Prompt Hardening: Ships anti-drift bootstrap prompts (
AGENTS.md,TOOLS.md) injected into your agent's system prompt on every message — enforcing safe practices, commit discipline, and change summaries out of the box. - Git Sync: Automatic hourly commits of your OpenClaw workspace to GitHub with configurable cron schedule. Combined with prompt hardening, every agent action is version-controlled and auditable.
- Version Management: In-place updates for both AlphaClaw and OpenClaw with changelog review and one-click apply.
- Codex OAuth: Built-in PKCE flow for OpenAI Codex CLI model access.
- Zero to production in one deploy: Railway/Render templates ship a complete stack — no manual gateway setup.
- Self-healing: Watchdog detects crashes, enters repair mode, relaunches the gateway, and notifies you.
- Everything in the browser: No SSH, no config files to hand-edit, no CLI required after first deploy.
- Stays out of the way: AlphaClaw manages infrastructure; OpenClaw handles the AI.
AlphaClaw simply wraps OpenClaw, it's not a dependency. Remove AlphaClaw and your agent keeps running. Nothing proprietary, nothing to migrate.
Set SETUP_PASSWORD at deploy time and visit your deployment URL. The welcome wizard handles the rest.
npm install @chrysb/alphaclaw
npx alphaclaw startOr with Docker:
FROM node:22-slim
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y git curl procps cron && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
WORKDIR /app
COPY package.json ./
RUN npm install --omit=dev
ENV PATH="/app/node_modules/.bin:$PATH"
ENV ALPHACLAW_ROOT_DIR=/data
EXPOSE 3000
CMD ["alphaclaw", "start"]| Tab | What it manages |
|---|---|
| General | Gateway status, channel health, pending pairings, Google Workspace, repo sync schedule, OpenClaw dashboard |
| Watchdog | Health monitoring, crash-loop status, auto-repair toggle, notifications toggle, event log, live log tail |
| Providers | AI provider credentials (Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, Mistral, Voyage, Groq, Deepgram) and model selection |
| Envars | Environment variables — view, edit, add — with gateway restart prompts |
| Webhooks | Webhook endpoints, transform modules, request history, payload inspection |
| Command | Description |
|---|---|
alphaclaw start |
Start the server (Setup UI + gateway manager) |
alphaclaw git-sync -m "message" |
Commit and push the OpenClaw workspace |
alphaclaw telegram topic add --thread <id> --name <text> |
Register a Telegram topic mapping |
alphaclaw version |
Print version |
alphaclaw help |
Show help |
graph TD
subgraph AlphaClaw
UI["Setup UI<br/><small>Preact + htm + Wouter</small>"]
WD["Watchdog<br/><small>Crash recovery · Notifications</small>"]
WH["Webhooks<br/><small>Transforms · Request logging</small>"]
UI --> API
WD --> API
WH --> API
API["Express Server<br/><small>JSON APIs · Auth · Proxy</small>"]
end
API -- "proxy" --> GW["OpenClaw Gateway<br/><small>Child process · 127.0.0.1:18789</small>"]
GW --> DATA["ALPHACLAW_ROOT_DIR<br/><small>.openclaw/ · .env · logs · SQLite</small>"]
The built-in watchdog monitors gateway health and recovers from failures automatically.
| Capability | Details |
|---|---|
| Health checks | Periodic openclaw health with configurable interval |
| Crash detection | Listens for gateway exit events |
| Crash-loop detection | Threshold-based (default: 3 crashes in 300s) |
| Auto-repair | Runs openclaw doctor --fix --yes, relaunches gateway |
| Notifications | Telegram and Discord alerts for crashes, repairs, and recovery |
| Event log | SQLite-backed incident history with API and UI access |
| Variable | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
SETUP_PASSWORD |
Yes | Password for the Setup UI |
OPENCLAW_GATEWAY_TOKEN |
Auto | Gateway auth token (auto-generated if unset) |
GITHUB_TOKEN |
Yes | GitHub PAT for workspace repo |
GITHUB_WORKSPACE_REPO |
Yes | GitHub repo for workspace sync (e.g. owner/repo) |
TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN |
Optional | Telegram bot token |
DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN |
Optional | Discord bot token |
WATCHDOG_AUTO_REPAIR |
Optional | Enable auto-repair on crash (true/false) |
WATCHDOG_NOTIFICATIONS_DISABLED |
Optional | Disable watchdog notifications (true/false) |
PORT |
Optional | Server port (default 3000) |
ALPHACLAW_ROOT_DIR |
Optional | Data directory (default /data) |
TRUST_PROXY_HOPS |
Optional | Trust proxy hop count for correct client IP |
AlphaClaw is a convenience wrapper — it intentionally trades some of OpenClaw's default hardening for ease of setup. You should understand what's different:
| Area | What AlphaClaw does | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Setup password | All gateway access is gated behind a single SETUP_PASSWORD. Brute-force protection is built in (exponential backoff lockout). |
Simpler than OpenClaw's pairing code flow, but the password must be strong. |
| One-click pairing | Channel pairings (Telegram/Discord) can be approved from the Setup UI instead of the CLI. | No terminal access required, but anyone with the setup password can approve pairings. |
| Auto CLI approval | The first CLI device pairing is auto-approved so you can connect without a second screen. Subsequent requests appear in the UI. | Removes the manual pairing step for the initial CLI connection. |
| Query-string tokens | Webhook URLs support ?token=<WEBHOOK_TOKEN> for providers that don't support Authorization headers. Warnings are shown in the UI. |
Tokens may appear in server logs and referrer headers. Use header auth when your provider supports it. |
| Gateway token | OPENCLAW_GATEWAY_TOKEN is auto-generated and injected into the environment so the proxy can authenticate with the gateway. |
The token lives in the .env file on the server — standard for managed deployments but worth noting. |
If you need OpenClaw's full security posture (manual pairing codes, no query-string tokens, no auto-approval), use OpenClaw directly without AlphaClaw.
npm install
npm test # Full suite (90 tests)
npm run test:watchdog # Watchdog-focused suite (14 tests)
npm run test:watch # Watch mode
npm run test:coverage # Coverage reportRequirements: Node.js ≥ 22.12.0
MIT
