Diagnose the Gateway

This playbook is read-only: no config writes, no service restarts, no doctor --fix, no killing listeners. Never print secret values; report only redacted SecretRef owner state. Every run ends with the observable Prove result or an exact explanation of why it could not be proven.

Gather

openclaw doctor --lint
openclaw gateway status --deep
openclaw config validate
openclaw channels status
openclaw models status
openclaw channels logs --channel <id>

doctor --lint is read-only and can exit 1 for findings: read the report and continue the remaining checks. Do not substitute ordinary doctor or doctor --non-interactive; they can copy legacy config and migrate state without --fix.

On managed installs, bounded recent logs: ./scripts/clawlog.sh (repo checkout) or the log path printed at gateway startup (/tmp/openclaw/openclaw-<date>.log by default).

Check these signatures without guessing:

• invalid config or schema errors (config validate names the exact key and line);
• degraded SecretRef owners — report the owner, never ids or values;
• expired or rejected channel authentication (channels status per account);
• EADDRINUSE, a second gateway listener, or service/config port mismatch (lsof -nP -iTCP:<port> -sTCP:LISTEN);
• gateway crash loops: read the last startup stack in the gateway log; a schema-valid config that still crashes startup is a bug — capture the stack and report it.

Correlate timestamps and identify the first owner-boundary failure.

Mutate

Nothing. Do not change config, migrate state, or alter services. Diagnostic commands may still produce incidental logs or cache bookkeeping.

Repair

Translate each finding into the next action, naming the responsible skill when one exists: configure-channel, add-model-provider, or cloud-image-bake. Recommend openclaw doctor --fix --non-interactive only as a separately approved step.

Prove

Repeat the smallest read-only check that exposes the condition and record its output, for example:

openclaw gateway status --deep
openclaw channels status --probe

If access, logs, or the gateway are unavailable, report that exact blocker rather than declaring a cause.

Report

Findings in causal order with evidence for each; current gateway/config/SecretRef/channel/port state; one recommended next skill or operator action. State explicitly that no config/service repairs or state migrations were performed.

Further reference: https://docs.openclaw.ai/gateway/troubleshooting