Gateway Watchdog

Production-grade bash watchdog for the OpenClaw gateway. Runs via launchd every 5 minutes. Handles boot grace periods, progressive retry with backoff, port-level fallback checks, stale PID detection, and restart cooldowns — preventing restart loops while keeping the gateway reliably alive.

Keeps the OpenClaw gateway alive without killing it during startup. Five defensive layers prevent false restarts and restart loops.

How It Works

1. HTTP check — pings http://127.0.0.1:18789; exits immediately if the gateway responds
2. Boot grace — if the process is <180s old, waits without acting (avoids killing a booting gateway)
3. Port check — if the port is bound but HTTP is slow, waits up to 15s for recovery
4. Progressive retry — 3 retries at 15s / 30s / 45s intervals
5. Cooldown — enforces a 10-minute gap between restarts to prevent loops

Logs go to ~/.openclaw/logs/watchdog.log.

Setup (macOS launchd)

Create ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.openclaw.gateway-watchdog.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.openclaw.gateway-watchdog</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/bin/bash</string>
        <string>/path/to/skills/gateway-watchdog/scripts/gateway-watchdog.sh</string>
    </array>
    <key>StartInterval</key>
    <integer>300</integer>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Then load it:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.openclaw.gateway-watchdog.plist

Usage (manual)

bash scripts/gateway-watchdog.sh

Requirements

• macOS (uses launchctl, lsof, date -j)
• curl in PATH
• OpenClaw gateway running under launchd as ai.openclaw.gateway