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OpenClaw Guide Ch8: Monitoring and Debugging

#openclaw #ai #agents #automation

Chapter 8: Monitoring and Debugging

🎯 Learning Objective: Build a comprehensive OpenClaw monitoring system, master performance debugging techniques, and implement rapid fault diagnosis with automated operations

📊 Monitoring System Overview

A production-grade OpenClaw deployment requires comprehensive monitoring:

  • 🔍 Real-Time Monitoring: System status, performance metrics, error rates
  • 📝 Log Management: Structured logging, centralized collection, intelligent analysis
  • ⚠️ Alerting: Anomaly detection, tiered alerts, automated response
  • 📈 Visualization: Dashboards, trend analysis, capacity planning

🏗️ Monitoring Architecture

8.1 Monitoring Layer Model 

┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│          Application Monitoring         │
│   Agent perf | Session status | Tools   │
├─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│           Gateway Monitoring            │
│   Connections | Latency | Throughput    │
├─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│            System Monitoring            │
│    CPU | Memory | Disk | Network        │
├─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│        Infrastructure Monitoring        │
│    Servers | Network | Storage          │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘
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📋 Built-in OpenClaw Monitoring

8.3 Gateway Status Monitoring

Basic Status Queries 

# Full system status
openclaw status

# Detailed monitoring info
openclaw status --all --deep

# JSON output (for scripting)
openclaw status --json
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Key Metrics 

{
  "gateway": {
    "uptime": "72h 15m",
    "version": "2026.2.9",
    "connections": 42,
    "requests_total": 15847,
    "requests_per_minute": 23.4,
    "memory_usage": "512MB",
    "cpu_usage": "15%"
  },
  "agents": {
    "total": 8,
    "active": 6,
    "sessions": 299,
    "avg_response_time": "1.2s"
  }
}
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8.4 Health Checks

Automated Health Checks 

# Run a full health check
openclaw doctor --non-interactive

# Check specific components
openclaw doctor --check-channels
openclaw doctor --check-models
openclaw doctor --check-security
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📝 Log Management

8.5 Log Configuration 

{
  "logging": {
    "level": "info",
    "format": "structured",
    "outputs": [
      {
        "type": "file",
        "path": "/var/log/openclaw/gateway.log",
        "rotation": {
          "maxSize": "100MB",
          "maxFiles": 10,
          "compress": true
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}
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Log Viewing Commands 

# Real-time log stream
openclaw logs --follow

# Filter error logs
openclaw logs --level error --since "1h"

# Agent-specific logs
openclaw logs --agent main --limit 100

# Filter by channel
openclaw logs --channel telegram --since "2026-02-13"
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8.6 ELK Stack Integration 

# docker-compose-logging.yml
version: '3.8'

services:
  elasticsearch:
    image: docker.elastic.co/elasticsearch/elasticsearch:8.11.0
    environment:
      - discovery.type=single-node
      - "ES_JAVA_OPTS=-Xms512m -Xmx512m"
    ports:
      - "9200:9200"

  logstash:
    image: docker.elastic.co/logstash/logstash:8.11.0
    volumes:
      - ./logstash.conf:/usr/share/logstash/pipeline/logstash.conf
      - /var/log/openclaw:/logs:ro
    depends_on:
      - elasticsearch

  kibana:
    image: docker.elastic.co/kibana/kibana:8.11.0
    ports:
      - "5601:5601"
    depends_on:
      - elasticsearch
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8.7 Structured Logging Best Practices 

{
  "timestamp": "2026-02-13T11:02:45.123Z",
  "level": "INFO",
  "component": "gateway",
  "agent_id": "main",
  "session_id": "abc123",
  "channel": "telegram",
  "action": "message_received",
  "duration_ms": 1250,
  "metadata": {
    "tool_calls": 3,
    "tokens_used": 1847,
    "model": "claude-sonnet-4"
  }
}
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📈 Performance Monitoring and Debugging

8.8 Prometheus Integration 

# prometheus.yml
global:
  scrape_interval: 15s

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: 'openclaw-gateway'
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['localhost:18789']
    metrics_path: '/metrics'
    scrape_interval: 10s

  - job_name: 'node-exporter'
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['localhost:9100']
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Custom Metrics Endpoint 

# OpenClaw Prometheus metrics endpoint
curl http://localhost:18789/metrics

# Example metrics output
openclaw_gateway_requests_total{channel="telegram"} 15847
openclaw_gateway_response_time_seconds{quantile="0.5"} 1.2
openclaw_gateway_response_time_seconds{quantile="0.95"} 3.5
openclaw_agent_sessions_active{agent="main"} 12
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8.9 Performance Debugging Tools 

# Agent performance profiling
openclaw agent --profile --message "test query"

# Memory search performance test
openclaw memory benchmark --queries 1000

# Gateway load test
openclaw gateway --benchmark --duration 60s
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🚨 Alerting and Notification

8.10 Alert Rule Configuration

Prometheus Alert Rules 

# openclaw-alerts.yml
groups:
  - name: openclaw.rules
    rules:
      - alert: HighErrorRate
        expr: rate(openclaw_gateway_errors_total[5m]) > 0.1
        for: 2m
        labels:
          severity: critical
        annotations:
          summary: "High error rate detected"

      - alert: HighResponseTime
        expr: openclaw_gateway_response_time_seconds{quantile="0.95"} > 5
        for: 5m
        labels:
          severity: warning
        annotations:
          summary: "High response time"

      - alert: AgentDown
        expr: openclaw_agent_status == 0
        for: 1m
        labels:
          severity: critical
        annotations:
          summary: "Agent is down"
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8.11 Intelligent Alerting Strategy

Tiered Alerting and Escalation 

{
  "alerting": {
    "levels": [
      {
        "name": "info",
        "channels": ["log"],
        "escalation": false
      },
      {
        "name": "warning",
        "channels": ["slack", "email"],
        "escalation": {
          "after": "15m",
          "to": "critical"
        }
      },
      {
        "name": "critical",
        "channels": ["telegram", "phone", "pager"],
        "escalation": {
          "after": "5m",
          "to": "emergency"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}
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📊 Visualization Dashboards

8.12 Grafana Dashboard 

{
  "dashboard": {
    "title": "OpenClaw System Overview",
    "panels": [
      {
        "title": "Request Rate",
        "type": "graph",
        "targets": [
          {
            "expr": "rate(openclaw_gateway_requests_total[5m])",
            "legendFormat": "{{channel}}"
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "title": "Response Time Percentiles",
        "type": "graph",
        "targets": [
          {
            "expr": "openclaw_gateway_response_time_seconds{quantile=\"0.5\"}",
            "legendFormat": "p50"
          },
          {
            "expr": "openclaw_gateway_response_time_seconds{quantile=\"0.95\"}",
            "legendFormat": "p95"
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        "title": "Active Sessions",
        "type": "singlestat",
        "targets": [
          {
            "expr": "sum(openclaw_agent_sessions_active)"
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}
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🔧 Fault Diagnosis and Debugging

8.14 Diagnostic Decision Tree 

Fault Report →
├── User cannot access?
│   ├── Check Gateway status → openclaw status
│   ├── Check channel connections → openclaw status --channels
│   └── Check network connectivity → ping/traceroute
│
├── Slow response?
│   ├── Check system load → top/htop
│   ├── Check Agent performance → openclaw logs --level performance
│   └── Check memory usage → openclaw memory stats
│
└── Feature malfunction?
    ├── Check error logs → openclaw logs --level error
    ├── Check configuration → openclaw doctor
    └── Check model status → openclaw status --models
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Automated Diagnostic Script 

#!/bin/bash
# openclaw-troubleshoot.sh

echo "🔍 OpenClaw Automated Diagnostics"
echo "================================="

# 1. Basic connectivity check
echo "📡 Checking Gateway connectivity..."
if ! curl -s http://localhost:18789/health > /dev/null; then
    echo "❌ Gateway not responding, checking service status"
    systemctl --user status openclaw-gateway
    exit 1
fi
echo "✅ Gateway running normally"

# 2. Channel status check
echo "📱 Checking channel status..."
CHANNELS=$(openclaw status --json | jq -r '.channels | to_entries[] | select(.value.status != "OK") | .key')
if [[ -n "$CHANNELS" ]]; then
    echo "⚠️ Channel issues found: $CHANNELS"
else
    echo "✅ All channels healthy"
fi

# 3. Performance metrics check
echo "⚡ Checking performance metrics..."
echo "  - System load: $(uptime)"
echo "  - Memory usage: $(free -h | grep Mem | awk '{print $3"/"$2}')"

# 4. Error log analysis
echo "📋 Checking recent errors..."
ERROR_COUNT=$(openclaw logs --level error --since "1h" --json | jq '. | length')
if [[ "$ERROR_COUNT" -gt 10 ]]; then
    echo "⚠️ Found $ERROR_COUNT errors. Recent errors:"
    openclaw logs --level error --limit 5
fi
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🤖 Automated Operations

8.16 Self-Healing System 

#!/bin/bash
# auto-heal.sh — OpenClaw self-healing script

HEALTH_CHECK_URL="http://localhost:18789/health"
MAX_RETRIES=3

check_health() {
    local response=$(curl -s -w "%{http_code}" -o /dev/null "$HEALTH_CHECK_URL")
    [[ "$response" == "200" ]]
}

restart_gateway() {
    echo "$(date): Anomaly detected, preparing to restart..."
    openclaw gateway stop --graceful --timeout 30s
    sleep 5
    openclaw gateway start --background
    sleep 10

    if check_health; then
        echo "$(date): Gateway restart successful"
        return 0
    else
        echo "$(date): Gateway restart failed"
        return 1
    fi
}

# Main loop
while true; do
    if ! check_health; then
        for i in $(seq 1 $MAX_RETRIES); do
            echo "$(date): Restart attempt ($i/$MAX_RETRIES)"
            if restart_gateway; then break; fi
            if [[ $i -eq $MAX_RETRIES ]]; then
                echo "$(date): Restart failed, sending alert"
                curl -X POST "$ALERT_WEBHOOK" \
                     -d '{"level":"critical","message":"OpenClaw Gateway restart failed"}'
            fi
            sleep 300
        done
    fi
    sleep 60
done
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📋 Chapter Summary

Key Takeaways

  1. Layered Monitoring: Application, Gateway, System, Infrastructure layers
  2. Full Observability: Metrics, Logs, Traces — the three pillars
  3. Intelligent Alerting: Tiered alerts, escalation, silence windows
  4. Automated Ops: Self-healing, auto-scaling, backup & recovery

Monitoring Checklist

  • ✅ Basic Metrics: CPU, memory, disk, network
  • ✅ Application Metrics: Request rate, response time, error rate, concurrency
  • ✅ Business Metrics: User activity, token usage, channel distribution
  • ✅ Security Metrics: Auth failures, anomalous access, permission changes

Practice Tips

  1. Start with basic monitoring, then progressively enhance
  2. Establish standardized alert response procedures
  3. Regularly conduct disaster recovery drills
  4. Continuously optimize monitoring strategies and alert thresholds

🔗 Related Resources:

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