A lightweight system-level watchdog designed to monitor sub-agent processes and automate configuration recovery for the OpenClaw gateway.
Install & Download
1. ClawHub CLI
The fastest way to install a skill directly from the registry.
npx clawhub@latest install openclaw-claw-guard
2. Manual Installation
Copy the skill folder to one of these locations
~/.openclaw/skills/ <project>/skills/ Priority: Workspace > Local > Bundled
3. Prompt Installation
Copy this prompt to OpenClaw to install it automatically.
Help me install openclaw-claw-guard using Clawhub. If Clawhub is not installed, install it first (npm i -g clawhub).
Prefer to download?
Get the raw skill files in a ZIP archive.
What is ClawGuard Task & Gateway Watchdog?
ClawGuard provides a robust safety net for developers building with Openclaw Skills. It functions as a lightweight daemon that monitors explicitly registered process IDs (PIDs) and file system events, ensuring that long-running background tasks don't fail silently. By integrating directly with system services like systemd or launchd, it offers a reliable way to maintain uptime and visibility across complex AI agent workflows.
Beyond simple monitoring, this tool acts as a critical recovery layer for the OpenClaw gateway. In the event of a failed restart—whether due to a configuration error or a system crash—it automatically reverts to previous configuration backups, ensuring the gateway returns to a functional state without manual intervention. This makes it an essential component for any production-grade deployment of Openclaw Skills where high availability is required.
ClawGuard Task & Gateway Watchdog Use Cases
- Monitoring long-running sub-agent tasks to ensure they haven't crashed or stalled during execution.
- Automatically reverting gateway configurations if a new update causes a boot failure.
- Receiving real-time notifications via Matrix, Discord, or Slack when a background process terminates.
- Watching specific directories or log files for freshness to detect stalled data processing jobs.
- Managing background process lifecycles in resource-constrained environments.
How ClawGuard Task & Gateway Watchdog Works
- Registration: The user or agent explicitly registers a PID or a gateway restart event with the watchdog using the CLI.
- Snapshotting: For gateway restarts, ClawGuard automatically takes a snapshot of the current configuration, rotating up to five previous backups.
- Periodic Polling: Every 15 seconds, the service checks the status of all registered PIDs and the health of the gateway service.
- Stale Detection: The watchdog evaluates log file or directory timestamps against a defined timeout to detect stale or "zombie" processes.
- Trigger & Notify: If a failure is detected (PID gone or timeout reached), it executes recovery logic, such as config reversion, and sends a notification to the designated target channel.
- Cleanup: Once a notification is sent or a task completes, the entry is removed from the registry to prevent duplicate alerts.
ClawGuard Task & Gateway Watchdog Setup
To install the watchdog for your Openclaw Skills environment, run the following commands:
cd <skill-dir>
bash scripts/install.sh
To automate gateway recovery, add the register-restart command to your systemd service file:
# ~/.config/systemd/user/openclaw-gateway.service
[Service]
ExecStartPre=/home/<user>/.local/bin/claw-guard register-restart
ExecStart=...
Then reload the daemon:
systemctl --user daemon-reload
ClawGuard Task & Gateway Watchdog Data Schema & Taxonomy
ClawGuard manages its state with a focus on minimal persistence to ensure a clean slate upon reboot, while keeping critical backups on disk.
| Component | Location / Structure | Persistence |
|---|---|---|
| Registry | In-memory state of active PIDs and watches | Cleared on Restart |
| CLI Binary | ~/.local/bin/claw-guard |
Permanent |
| Workspace | ~/.openclaw/workspace/tools/claw-guard/ |
Permanent |
| Config Backups | Rotating .bak files (up to 5 versions) |
Persistent |
ClawGuard Task & Gateway Watchdog Advanced Features
- Automatic configuration rotation: Maintains a history of the last 5 known-working gateway configurations for safe rollbacks.
- Directory Heartbeats: Monitors file creation within a specific folder to ensure export or generation tasks are progressing.
- Cross-platform support: Native integration with systemd for Linux and launchd for macOS users.
- Multi-target Notifications: Supports routing alerts to Matrix, Telegram, Discord, and Slack via the OpenClaw message bus.
- Resource Efficiency: Designed with a minimal footprint, consuming roughly 7MB of RAM with negligible CPU overhead.
SKILL.md
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