version: "1.0.1" name: openclaw-guardian description: Deploy and manage a Guardian watchdog process for OpenClaw Gateway. Provides automated health monitoring, self-repair via doctor --fix, git-based workspace rollback, daily snapshots, and optional Discord alerting. Use when a user wants to harden their OpenClaw instance against crashes, config corruption, or bad workspace edits — or when setting up Guardian for the first time on a new server/container.

OpenClaw Guardian

Guardian is a standalone bash watchdog that keeps OpenClaw Gateway alive 24/7.

Repair ladder:

1. Detect Gateway down (every 30s)
2. Run openclaw doctor --fix (up to 3 attempts)
3. If still down → git reset --hard to last stable commit, restart Gateway
4. If all fails → cooldown 300s, resume monitoring
5. Daily automatic git snapshot of workspace

Setup Steps

1. Initialize git (required for rollback)

cd ~/.openclaw/workspace
git config --global user.email "guardian@example.com"
git config --global user.name "Guardian"
git init && git add -A && git commit -m "initial"

Skip if repo already exists. Without git, doctor --fix still works; rollback is skipped.

2. Install guardian.sh

Copy scripts/guardian.sh from this skill to ~/.openclaw/guardian.sh:

cp scripts/guardian.sh ~/.openclaw/guardian.sh
chmod +x ~/.openclaw/guardian.sh

3. Start Guardian

Container / no systemd (nohup):

nohup ~/.openclaw/guardian.sh >> /tmp/openclaw-guardian.log 2>&1 &

Linux VPS with systemd: See references/setup.md → Pattern B.

4. Auto-start on container restart

Add to ~/.openclaw/start-gateway.sh (before the final exec line):

pkill -f "guardian.sh" 2>/dev/null || true
nohup /home/ubuntu/.openclaw/guardian.sh >> /tmp/openclaw-guardian.log 2>&1 &

5. Optional: Discord alerts

export DISCORD_WEBHOOK_URL="https://discord.com/api/webhooks/..."

Or add to start-gateway.sh as a persistent export.

Verify

pgrep -a -f "guardian.sh"          # confirm process running
tail -f /tmp/openclaw-guardian.log  # watch live logs

Configuration

All settings via environment variables. Defaults work out of the box. See references/setup.md for full variable reference, systemd config, and architecture diagram.

Notes

• Guardian coexists with gw-watchdog.sh — run both for layered resilience
• Rollback targets the 2nd-newest non-auto commit (skips daily-backup, rollback, auto-backup commits)
• Log path: /tmp/openclaw-guardian.log