clawops

MCP-native infrastructure ops for OpenClaw — with read-only mode, destructive-action confirmation, and audit logs built in.

clawops is a CLI and MCP server for deploying and operating self-hosted OpenClaw instances. Provision on AWS, GCP, Azure, or any Linux VM — then manage day-to-day operations from the terminal, or let Claude Code and Cursor drive them through typed MCP tools with explicit safety controls.

What's new in v1.7.3

README maintenance. The release-notes section had grown to four versions and was missing v1.7.2 entirely. It now carries the current line only; CHANGELOG.md remains the full history.

What's new in v1.7.2

Requires OpenClaw >= 2026.9.2. This line deploys the 2.0 runtime contract: a writable state directory holding config, SQLite and plugins; gateway.mode written into the config; no --allow-unconfigured. A pre-2.0 OpenClaw understands none of it, so doctor, plan, up and apply refuse anything below the floor. For OpenClaw <= 2026.7.1-2, use npm install -g @clawops/cli@legacy.

The support range in spec/openclaw-versions.yaml was previously unbounded and read by no code, so any OpenClaw release was accepted. Moving tags are now resolved to a concrete version before the range check, and an unresolved tag is refused rather than assumed safe — latest and stable both point at 2.0 today. The default is now a concrete pin.

clawops doctor --stack <name> reports the version a deployed gateway is actually running, so an existing deployment that already picked up 2.0 through a moving tag can be identified.

clawops config set now applies. It never has. The config clawops mounted was read by nothing on either OpenClaw line — models, channels and auth mode were silently discarded. Setting OPENCLAW_CONFIG_PATH fixes it, with four guards: gateway.port normalisation (with a warning), an argv --port pin, a parse check, and a post-restart health gate. The MCP gateway restart tool, which dropped the config mount entirely, now matches the CLI path.

A fresh local deployment starts. OpenClaw refuses a non-loopback bind without auth and always binds 0.0.0.0 in a container, and the bootstrap never supplied a token — so the gateway exited 78 and systemd restart-looped. A token is now generated once, kept in a 0600 env file, and passed via --env-file, never on the command line.

Ollama is reachable. localhost inside the container is the container. clawops now passes --add-host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway and defaults the Ollama address to match.

Packaging. spec/ was missing from the published files, and neither it nor bootstrap.sh.tmpl resolved from the bundle — so clawops plan and clawops up --provider local failed from an npm install. Both are now shipped and resolved correctly.

SSH host keys. The verifier read each known_hosts line's key type as the key, so any standard entry failed permanently with Host denied. Standard entries now parse, including comma-separated host lists, [host]:port, hashed hostnames, @revoked / @cert-authority markers, and wildcard and negated patterns.

Behaviour change: a host covered by a wildcard whose key does not match is now refused where it previously connected. Ignoring wildcards meant trust-on-first-use accepted a key your own known_hosts contradicted. This matches OpenSSH.

Who this is for

• OpenClaw users who want the simplest path to self-hosting across cloud or local VMs, with reliable deploy, status checks, logs, backups, and upgrades in a single CLI.
• Claude Code / Cursor / MCP users looking for a real-world reference implementation of safe infrastructure operations through MCP — typed tool schemas, read-only mode, destructive-action confirmation, and audit logs.
• Self-hosted AI and local-first developers who want to run their own AI assistant without committing to Kubernetes, a managed SaaS platform, or a single cloud provider.

What clawops does

• Provisions and tears down OpenClaw infrastructure on AWS, GCP, Azure, and local VMs using the Pulumi Automation API (embedded — no pulumi binary required).
• Manages day-to-day operations: status, logs, SSH, tunnels, config, agents, gateway, backups.
• Exposes every operation as a typed MCP tool so AI agents can drive ops safely.
• Enforces a plan → review → apply discipline for cloud deployments.
• Emits JSON output everywhere (--json) for scripting and automation.
• Never stores cloud credentials — reads them from your environment's existing CLI profiles.

What clawops does not do

• No high availability or clustering. Optimized for single-node deployments.
• No Kubernetes. It deploys to VMs, not container orchestration platforms.
• No OpenClaw skill/agent authoring. clawops manages infrastructure; what runs on it is up to you and OpenClaw.
• No TLS or domain automation (yet). Bring your own reverse proxy or see docs/limitations.md for the manual path.
• No credential storage. Cloud credentials must be configured in your environment before using clawops. They are never written to ~/.clawops/config.json.
• No native Windows. WSL2 is fully supported; see docs/support-matrix.md.

Quick Start

npm install -g @clawops/cli
clawops setup

clawops setup is an interactive wizard that gets OpenClaw running in about 2 minutes. It handles everything in one flow — no config files to write by hand, no commands to memorize.

What the wizard does

Step 1 — Choose a deployment target

Pick an existing server you can SSH into (Linux or macOS), or a new cloud VM on AWS, GCP, or Azure. Cloud deployments walk you through authenticating with the provider CLI if you aren't already signed in.

Step 2 — Pick an LLM provider

Choose from Anthropic, OpenAI, Amazon Bedrock, Ollama, or others. The wizard prompts for your API key and saves it locally (in ~/.clawops/secrets/, chmod 600) — it is never sent anywhere except to OpenClaw on the target host when the config is applied.

Step 3 — Add chat integrations (optional)

Select any combination of Discord, Telegram, Slack, WhatsApp, or Teams. The wizard collects each integration's bot token the same way as the API key — paste it in, reference an env var, or point to a file.

Step 4 — Wire your AI editor

Select which AI apps should have access to clawops — Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code, and Zed are all supported. The wizard writes an MCP server entry into each app's config file using the absolute binary path so the app can launch it independently.

Step 5 — Deploy

The wizard bootstraps OpenClaw on the target host over SSH (installs Docker, pulls the image, starts the container), applies your LLM and integration config, generates a gateway auth token, and prints a direct dashboard URL:

✔ All done! OpenClaw is running.
ℹ Open dashboard: http://192.168.1.50:18789?token=<your-token>
ℹ Token saved to ~/.clawops/secrets/GATEWAY_TOKEN_my-stack

Prerequisites: Node.js ≥ 22, an SSH key, and either an SSH-reachable Linux/macOS host or a cloud account with CLI credentials configured (aws configure, gcloud auth login, or az login).

For a full narrated walkthrough with example output, see docs/demo-script.md.

Manual setup — existing server

If you prefer step-by-step control, or are adding clawops to an already-running deployment:

npm install -g @clawops/cli

clawops doctor   # verify environment

clawops init --provider local --host 192.168.1.50 --user ubuntu --key-path ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
clawops up       # installs Docker + OpenClaw over SSH
clawops status

See docs/examples/local-vm.md for SSH prerequisites, firewall setup, and troubleshooting.

Manual setup — cloud (AWS)

npm install -g @clawops/cli

# Requires AWS credentials in your environment (AWS_PROFILE or ~/.aws/credentials)
clawops init --provider aws

# Edit ~/.clawops/config.json — set stateUrl to your S3 bucket

clawops plan --provider aws --stack default --out /tmp/plan.json
clawops apply /tmp/plan.json

Connect an AI editor

The setup wizard handles this automatically (Step 4). To wire or re-wire editors at any time:

clawops mcp install

This opens the same interactive checkbox used in the wizard — select Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code, or Zed and clawops writes the MCP entry into each app's config using the correct absolute binary path.

To add the entry manually instead, paste this into your editor's MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "clawops": {
      "command": "/path/to/clawops",
      "args": ["mcp", "serve", "--read-only"]
    }
  }
}

Replace /path/to/clawops with the output of which clawops. Config file locations: