FAQ

Short answers to what people ask most. Each links to the page that goes further.

What is clawops?

clawops is an open-source command-line tool and MCP server that deploys and operates self-hosted OpenClaw instances on AWS, GCP, Azure, or any Linux machine you can reach over SSH. It provisions the infrastructure, installs and configures OpenClaw, and then handles the day-to-day: logs, health, configuration, upgrades, backups and hardening. It is free under the MPL-2.0 licence; you pay only your own cloud bill. Introduction.

How do I self-host OpenClaw?

Install clawops with npm install -g @clawops/cli, run clawops init to choose a provider and state backend, then clawops up to provision a machine and deploy OpenClaw onto it. On a Linux box you already have, pass --provider local with the host address and clawops bootstraps it over SSH, installing Docker for you. The whole first deploy is three commands. Quickstart.

Can I run OpenClaw on AWS, GCP or Azure?

Yes — all three are supported, and a stack deploys the same way on each. clawops creates the network, firewall rules, a static address and the instance, then installs OpenClaw on it. Pulumi state lives in your own S3, GCS or Azure Blob bucket, so the deployment is yours and survives clawops being uninstalled. Providers.

Can I use a VPS or a machine I already have?

Yes. The local provider takes any reachable Ubuntu, Debian or RHEL host and bootstraps it over SSH, which covers a VPS, a homelab box or a spare machine. It needs no cloud account and no state bucket. Quickstart.

Do I need to know Pulumi or Terraform?

No. clawops uses the Pulumi Automation API internally, but you never write infrastructure code and never run Pulumi yourself — it installs the CLI it needs and drives it. What you review is a JSON deploy plan describing the machine, the region and the firewall rules. Plan and apply.

Is it safe to let an AI agent deploy infrastructure?

With clawops an agent cannot apply infrastructure from a prompt, which is the property the whole design rests on. A tool emits a deploy plan as JSON, a person reads it, and only then does apply run — and apply re-checks that plan against live state rather than trusting the file it was handed. Destructive tools ask for confirmation before running, a read-only mode serves only the tools that change nothing, and every call is written to an audit log with secrets redacted. How the safety model works.

How do I let Claude Code or Cursor manage my server?

Run clawops mcp install and pick your editor, or add clawops as an MCP server manually with the command npx -y @clawops/cli mcp serve. The editor then has 20 typed tools for status, logs, config, deployment and hardening. Adding --read-only serves only the tools that cannot change anything, which is a reasonable place to start. MCP server.

How do I keep the OpenClaw gateway off the public internet?

By default the gateway binds to loopback and nothing is exposed; you reach it with clawops tunnel, which forwards the port over SSH. Firewall rules are deny-all unless you name a CIDR explicitly. A stack can also be joined to a Tailscale network and its public SSH and gateway ports closed entirely, which clawops will only do after proving it can still reach the host over the tailnet. Security.

Where are my cloud credentials stored?

Nowhere in clawops. It reads credentials from the environment it runs in — AWS_PROFILE, gcloud application-default credentials, Azure environment variables — and its own config file holds no secrets. Secrets you give OpenClaw are stored separately and redacted from logs and audit records. Secrets.

How do I upgrade a self-hosted OpenClaw?

Run clawops gateway update to move a running deployment to a newer OpenClaw version, or clawops backup create first if you want a restore point. clawops refuses versions outside the range it has been tested against rather than letting a deploy fail halfway. Operations.

What does clawops cost?

clawops itself is free and open source under the MPL-2.0 licence, with no paid tier and no account. You pay your cloud provider for whatever you provision — typically one small virtual machine, a static IP address and a storage bucket for state. On a machine you already own there is nothing to pay at all.

What does clawops not do?

It does not terminate TLS or manage domains, so put a reverse proxy in front if you need HTTPS. It deploys one node per stack, with no clustering or failover. Windows is supported through WSL2 rather than natively. And it manages the infrastructure OpenClaw runs on, not the agent itself. Limitations.