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openclaw doctor is the repair and migration tool for OpenClaw. It fixes stale config/state, checks health, and provides actionable repair steps.

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Quick start

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Headless and automation modes

Accept default non-service repairs without prompting and enter maintenance while preserving the installed gateway service definition.
To review changes before writing, open the config file first:

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Read-only lint mode

openclaw doctor --lint is the automation-friendly sibling of openclaw doctor --fix. They share the same Doctor rule registry, but they do not select or act on rules in the same way: Default doctor --lint runs the broad-safe automation profile: checks that are static, local, and useful in CI or preflight output. It skips opt-in checks that are advisory, environment-sensitive, live-service dependent, account/workspace inventory, or historical cleanup. Use doctor --lint --all when you want the full registered lint audit, including those opt-in checks, or --only <id> for a targeted check. doctor --fix does not use the lint default profile and does not accept --all. It runs Doctor’s ordered repair path: modern health checks may provide an optional repair() implementation, and older areas still use their legacy Doctor repair flow. Some lint findings are intentionally diagnostic only, so a check appearing in --lint --all does not mean --fix will mutate that area. The contract separates detect() (reports findings) from repair() (reports changes/diffs/side effects), which keeps a path open for a future doctor --fix --dry-run without turning lint checks into mutation planners. Some built-in checks are default-disabled internally so they stay available to --all, --only, and Doctor repair flows without becoming part of the default doctor --lint automation profile. Finding severity is still emitted per finding (info, warning, or error); default selection is not a severity level.
JSON output fields:
  • ok: whether any finding met the selected severity threshold
  • checksRun / checksSkipped: counts (skipped by profile, --only, or --skip)
  • findings: structured diagnostics with checkId, severity, message, and optional path, line, column, ocPath, source, target, requirement, fixHint
Exit codes: These threshold-based exit codes belong to explicit --lint mode, with or without --json. Bare openclaw doctor --json preserves ordinary Doctor’s advisory exit 0 after producing its payload; machine consumers should read ok and findings. Fatal errors before output remain nonzero. Flags:
  • --severity-min info|warning|error (default warning): controls both what prints and what causes a non-zero exit.
  • --all: runs every registered lint check, including opt-in checks excluded from the default automation set.
  • --only <id> (repeatable): run only the named check id(s); an unknown id is reported as an error finding.
  • --skip <id> (repeatable): exclude a check while keeping the rest of the run active.
  • --severity-min, --all, --only, and --skip require --lint. Bare --json is allowed for an advisory machine-readable report; --fix rejects it unless another machine mode owns the output.

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What it does (summary)

  • Optional pre-flight update for git installs (interactive only).
  • UI protocol freshness check (rebuilds Control UI when the protocol schema is newer).
  • Health check + restart prompt.
  • Problem-only skill and plugin notes; healthy inventory stays in openclaw skills check and openclaw plugins list.
  • Config normalization for legacy value shapes.
  • Removal of retired gateway.controlUi.toolTitles config. Tool activity descriptions appear automatically without utility-model requests.
  • Inspection of legacy default HTTPS Tailscale Serve routes from a LAN-bound Gateway. Doctor does not change these routes because status shape cannot prove ownership; after confirming a stale route, clear only its root handler and configure managed loopback ingress manually. Retired named-Service config is removed with managed ingress disabled until the operator chooses a device route; custom external routes receive manual guidance.
  • Talk config migration from legacy flat talk.* fields into talk.provider + talk.providers.<provider>.
  • Browser migration checks for legacy Chrome extension configs, owned native-bootstrap registration drift, and Chrome MCP readiness.
  • OpenCode provider override warnings (models.providers.opencode / opencode-zen / opencode-go).
  • Legacy OpenAI Codex provider/profile migration (openai-codex → openai) and shadowing warnings for stale models.providers.openai-codex.
  • OAuth TLS prerequisites check for OpenAI Codex OAuth profiles.
  • Plugin/tool allowlist warnings when plugins.allow is restrictive but tool policy still asks for wildcard or plugin-owned tools.
  • Legacy on-disk state migration (sessions/agent dir/WhatsApp auth).
  • Legacy Tailscale provider login migration from user profile email aliases to provider identities.
  • Merged shared owner profile detection and repair with openclaw doctor --fix; restores the owner identity while preserving personal emails, roles, and GitHub identities. Reconnect after repair.
  • Retired QMD memory config and derived workspace cleanup; see Migrating from QMD.
  • Legacy plugin manifest contract key migration (speechProviders, realtimeTranscriptionProviders, realtimeVoiceProviders, mediaUnderstandingProviders, imageGenerationProviders, videoGenerationProviders, webFetchProviders, webSearchProviders → contracts).
  • Legacy cron store migration (jobId, schedule.cron, top-level delivery/payload fields, payload provider, notify: true webhook fallback jobs).
  • Legacy workspace TOOLS.md migration into the ## Tools section of AGENTS.md, with the original archived under the state directory before removal.
  • Codex CLI runtime pin repair (agentRuntime.id: "codex-cli" → "codex") across agents.defaults, agents.entries.*, and models.providers.* (including per-model entries).
  • Stale plugin config cleanup when plugins are enabled; when plugins.enabled=false, stale plugin references are preserved as inert containment config.
  • Session lock file inspection and stale lock cleanup.
  • Session transcript repair for duplicated prompt-rewrite branches created by affected 2026.4.24 builds.
  • Wedged main-session and subagent restart-recovery tombstone detection. Doctor reports the blocked sessions and only repairs stale aborted flags that conflict with an existing tombstone; it does not re-enable automatic recovery.
  • State integrity and permissions checks (sessions, transcripts, state dir).
  • Config file permission checks (chmod 600) when running locally.
  • Model auth health: checks OAuth expiry, can refresh expiring tokens, and reports auth-profile cooldown/disabled states.
  • Sandbox image repair when sandboxing is enabled.
  • Legacy service migration and extra gateway detection.
  • Matrix channel legacy state migration (in --fix / --repair mode).
  • Gateway runtime checks (service installed but not running; cached launchd label).
  • Channel status warnings (probed from the running gateway).
  • Channel-specific permission checks live under openclaw channels capabilities; for example, Discord voice channel permissions are audited with openclaw channels capabilities --channel discord --target channel:<channel-id>.
  • WhatsApp responsiveness checks for degraded Gateway event-loop health with local TUI clients still running; --fix stops only verified local TUI clients.
  • Codex route repair for legacy openai-codex/* model refs in primary models, fallbacks, image/video generation models, heartbeat/subagent/compaction overrides, hooks, channel model overrides, and session route pins; --fix rewrites them to openai/*, migrates openai-codex:* auth profiles/order to openai:*, removes stale session/whole-agent runtime pins, and lets the repaired effective route determine whether Codex is compatible.
  • Supervisor config audit (launchd/systemd/schtasks) with optional repair.
  • Embedded proxy environment cleanup for gateway services that captured shell HTTP_PROXY / HTTPS_PROXY / NO_PROXY values during install or update.
  • Gateway runtime checks (unsupported legacy Bun services, version-manager paths).
  • Gateway port collision diagnostics (default 18789).
  • Security warnings for open DM policies.
  • Gateway auth checks for local token mode (offers token generation when no token source exists; does not overwrite token SecretRef configs).
  • Device pairing trouble detection (pending first-time pair requests, pending role/scope upgrades, stale local device-token cache drift, and paired-record auth drift).
  • systemd linger check on Linux.
  • Workspace bootstrap file size check (truncation/near-limit warnings for context files).
  • Skills readiness check for the default agent; reports allowed skills with missing bins, env, config, or OS requirements, and --fix can disable unavailable skills in skills.entries.
  • Shell completion status check and auto-install/upgrade.
  • Memory search embedding provider readiness check (local model or remote API key).
  • Source install checks (pnpm workspace mismatch, missing UI assets, missing tsx binary).
  • Writes updated config + wizard metadata.

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Dreams UI backfill and reset

The Control UI Dreams scene includes Backfill, Reset, and Clear Grounded actions for the grounded dreaming workflow. These use gateway doctor-style RPC methods but are not part of openclaw doctor CLI repair/migration. None of these edit MEMORY.md, run full doctor migrations, or stage grounded candidates into the live short-term promotion store on their own. To feed grounded historical replay into the normal deep promotion lane, use the CLI flow instead:
That stages grounded durable candidates into the short-term dreaming store while DREAMS.md stays the review surface.

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Detailed behavior and rationale

If this is a git checkout and doctor is running interactively, it offers to update (fetch/rebase/build) before running doctor.
Doctor normalizes legacy value shapes into the current schema. Current Talk speech config is talk.provider + talk.providers.<provider>, with realtime voice config under talk.realtime.*. Doctor rewrites old talk.voiceId / talk.voiceAliases / talk.modelId / talk.outputFormat / talk.apiKey shapes into the provider map, and rewrites legacy top-level realtime selectors (talk.mode, talk.transport, talk.brain, talk.model, talk.voice) into talk.realtime.Doctor also warns when plugins.allow is non-empty and tool policy uses wildcard or plugin-owned tool entries. tools.allow: ["*"] only matches tools from plugins that actually load; it does not bypass the exclusive plugin allowlist.doctor --fix removes workspace: null from agents.entries.<id> so normal workspace resolution can apply. It also removes invalid heartbeat.activeHours windows from agent entries and agents.defaults, preserving other heartbeat settings. Reconfigure a valid window if needed; without an explicit or inherited window, heartbeat hours are unrestricted. These repairs also apply after migrating a legacy agents.list roster.
Gateway startup automatically applies deterministic, prompt-free legacy config migrations when an otherwise invalid single-file config can be fully migrated. It uses the same migration transforms as openclaw doctor --fix, validates the complete result including plugin config before writing, and reports the applied changes. The write runs under the startup migration lease and preserves the previous config in the five-slot openclaw.json.bak / .bak.1 through .bak.4 backup ring.Startup does not migrate configs using $include, configs in Nix mode, or configs last written by a newer OpenClaw version. It also skips automatic config migration while an update is in progress and plugin validation is deferred; the post-update doctor run owns that repair. If any validation or legacy-key issue remains after migration, startup leaves the config unchanged, refuses to start, and prints the openclaw doctor --fix hint. An interactive terminal can still offer to run doctor and retry once for configs that need other repairs; headless services stop with the hint.Other commands that encounter legacy keys still ask you to run openclaw doctor. Doctor explains the issues, shows its migrations, and rewrites ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json with the updated schema. Cron job store migrations are also handled by openclaw doctor --fix; automatic config-key migration does not import legacy session stores or repair services.When a readable active config can be fully migrated, Doctor preserves it before considering last-known-good recovery. This includes legacy multi-agent rosters with a default: true owner: unrelated settings and the original agent ownership survive the migration.Per-agent migrations apply to both keyed agents.entries and legacy agents.list rosters, including rosters that already set agents.ownership: "explicit". For example, Doctor preserves an agent’s legacy memorySearch settings under memory.search and converts sandbox.perSession to sandbox.scope. Existing values at the current config paths take precedence.
Doctor only carries automatic migrations for roughly two months after a key is retired. Older legacy keys (for example the original routing.queue, routing.bindings, routing.agents/defaultAgentId, routing.transcribeAudio, top-level agent.*, or top-level identity from the pre-multi-agent config shape) no longer have a migration path; config using them now fails validation instead of being rewritten. Fix those keys by hand against the current config reference before doctor can proceed.
Active migrations:
The Voice Call plugin supplies the migration for its legacy config keys. openclaw doctor --fix invokes it and persists the canonical shape in openclaw.json; runtime config parsing accepts only current keys. Existing canonical settings win over legacy values, including streaming provider credentials, models, and timing. Doctor reports retained destinations instead of claiming those legacy values were moved.
Per-agent memorySearch migrations work with both old agents.list rosters and keyed agents.entries. Doctor preserves explicit memory.search settings when merging legacy values, including environment references moved to the new paths. When repairs affect only per-agent settings, single-file agent includes stay in their included file.The retired tools.message.allowCrossContextSend flag migrates at both root and per-agent scopes. Doctor preserves the effective cross-context permissions, including an agent’s false override of a root true flag.Account-default guidance for multi-account channels:
  • If two or more channels.<channel>.accounts entries are configured without channels.<channel>.defaultAccount or accounts.default, doctor warns that fallback routing can pick an unexpected account.
  • If channels.<channel>.defaultAccount is set to an unknown account ID, doctor warns and lists configured account IDs.
In multi-agent configs, doctor --fix adds a missing account-scoped routing binding when all matchable narrower bindings for that channel/account explicitly name one configured agent. Existing routes remain unchanged. Accounts with no owner evidence or conflicting owners need an explicit binding; Doctor does not infer their owner from roster order or another channel/account.
If you have added models.providers.opencode, opencode-zen, or opencode-go manually while the matching official external plugin is installed and enabled, it overrides that plugin-provided catalog. That can force models onto the wrong API or zero out costs. Doctor warns so you can remove the override and restore per-model API routing + costs. Without the matching plugin, the entry remains a valid standalone custom provider.
If an extension-driver profile still carries a retired relay cdpUrl, doctor removes that URL while preserving driver: "extension"; the current extension relay owns its endpoint. Doctor also removes the retired browser.relayBindHost setting.Doctor warns while browser.extensionRelay.allowLegacyAuth is enabled. Upgrade paired Chrome extensions and external CDP clients to Browser Relay Authentication v2, then set the flag to false. V2 clients do not downgrade to legacy authentication.When a stable Chrome extension copy and owned native-host registration already exist, doctor reports registration drift. openclaw doctor --fix may repair that owned registration, but it never installs the host for every OpenClaw user and never overwrites a foreign same-name manifest or launcher. For initial setup, run openclaw browser extension install first, then add the official Chrome Web Store extension. The unpacked stable path is a development fallback.Doctor also audits the host-local Chrome MCP path when you use defaultProfile: "user" or a configured existing-session profile:
  • checks whether Google Chrome is installed on the same host for default auto-connect profiles
  • checks the detected Chrome version and warns when it is below Chrome 144
  • reminds you to enable remote debugging in the browser inspect page (for example chrome://inspect/#remote-debugging, brave://inspect/#remote-debugging, or edge://inspect/#remote-debugging)
Doctor cannot enable the Chrome-side setting for you. Host-local Chrome MCP still requires a Chromium-based browser 144+ on the gateway/node host, running locally, with remote debugging enabled and the first attach consent prompt approved in the browser.Readiness here only covers local attach prerequisites. Existing-session keeps the current Chrome MCP route limits; advanced routes like responsebody, PDF export, download interception, and batch actions still require a managed browser or raw CDP profile. This check does not apply to Docker, sandbox, remote-browser, or other headless flows, which continue to use raw CDP.
When an OpenAI Codex OAuth profile is configured, doctor probes the OpenAI authorization endpoint to verify that the local Node/OpenSSL TLS stack can validate the certificate chain. If the probe fails with a certificate error (for example UNABLE_TO_GET_ISSUER_CERT_LOCALLY, expired cert, or self-signed cert), doctor prints platform-specific fix guidance. On macOS with a Homebrew Node, the fix is usually brew postinstall ca-certificates. With --deep, the probe runs even if the gateway is healthy.
If you previously added legacy OpenAI transport settings under models.providers.openai-codex, they can shadow the built-in Codex OAuth provider path. Doctor warns when it sees those old transport settings alongside Codex OAuth so you can remove or rewrite the stale transport override and restore current routing behavior. Custom proxies and header-only overrides remain supported and do not trigger this warning, but those authored request routes are not eligible for implicit Codex selection.
Doctor checks for legacy openai-codex/* model refs. Native Codex harness routing uses canonical openai/* model refs, but the prefix alone never selects Codex. With runtime policy unset or auto, only an exact official HTTPS Platform Responses or ChatGPT Responses route with no authored request override is eligible. See OpenAI implicit agent runtime.In --fix / --repair mode, doctor rewrites affected default-agent and per-agent refs, including primary models, fallbacks, image/video generation models, heartbeat/subagent/compaction overrides, hooks, channel model overrides, and stale persisted session route state:
  • openai-codex/gpt-* becomes openai/gpt-*.
  • Codex intent moves to provider/model-scoped agentRuntime.id: "codex" entries for repaired agent model refs.
  • Stale whole-agent runtime config and persisted session runtime pins are removed because runtime selection is provider/model-scoped.
  • Existing provider/model runtime policy is preserved unless the repaired legacy model ref needs Codex routing to keep the old auth path.
  • Existing model fallback lists are preserved with their legacy entries rewritten; copied per-model settings move from the legacy key to the canonical openai/* key.
  • Persisted session modelProvider/providerOverride, model/modelOverride, fallback notices, and auth-profile pins are repaired across all discovered agent session stores.
  • Doctor separately repairs stale agentRuntime.id: "codex-cli" pins (a distinct legacy runtime id) to "codex" across agents.defaults, agents.entries.*, and models.providers.* model entries.
  • /codex ... means “control or bind a native Codex conversation from chat.”
  • /acp ... or runtime: "acp" means “use the external ACP/acpx adapter.”
Doctor also scans discovered agent session stores for stale auto-created route state after you move configured models or runtime away from a plugin-owned route such as Codex.openclaw doctor --fix can clear auto-created stale state such as modelOverrideSource: "auto" model pins, runtime model metadata, pinned harness ids, CLI session bindings, and auto auth-profile overrides when their owning route is no longer configured. Explicit user or legacy session model choices are reported for manual review and left untouched; switch them with /model ..., /new, or reset the session when that route is no longer intended.
Doctor can migrate older on-disk layouts into the current structure:
  • Session rows and transcripts: import legacy sessions.json and JSONL history from ~/.openclaw/sessions/ or per-agent sessions/ directories into ~/.openclaw/agents/<agentId>/agent/openclaw-agent.sqlite
  • Agent dir: from ~/.openclaw/agent/ to ~/.openclaw/agents/<agentId>/agent/
  • WhatsApp auth state (Baileys): from legacy ~/.openclaw/credentials/*.json (except oauth.json) to ~/.openclaw/credentials/whatsapp/<accountId>/... (default account id: default)
  • Signed device identity: from ~/.openclaw/identity/device.json into the primary device_identities row in state/openclaw.sqlite; Gateway startup also performs this verified import for valid legacy identities, while Doctor retains repair authority for invalid canonical rows; the separate device-auth file is left untouched
Legacy session-file import and repair belong to explicit Doctor runs. Gateway and local CLI startup use SQLite; they do not import, restore, or rewrite session JSON/JSONL files. When startup finds a legacy session store, it refuses readiness and prints the Doctor command for the active profile instead of serving empty history. Stop the Gateway, back up its state, and run openclaw doctor --fix before restarting it to upgrade old session history. The targeted migration sequence provides inspection and validation evidence. Current SQLite maintenance does not require legacy files to remain on disk.Doctor reports individual channel migration-plan failures while continuing plans for unrelated sources, including those from the same plugin. Plans sharing the failed source are deferred, and source cleanup waits for its last consumer to finish without reported failures or incomplete imports. Advisory startup migration warnings allow the Gateway to start degraded. Startup logs the warnings once with the exact repair command; openclaw status and openclaw doctor show the running Gateway’s warning report. Run openclaw doctor --fix against the same state/config, then restart the Gateway. Warning-bearing work is not marked complete and is retried on a later startup. Migration errors that leave required state unsafe to read, including failed shared-schema repair, still refuse startup.Doctor emits warnings when migrations leave legacy folders behind as backups. WhatsApp auth is intentionally only migrated via openclaw doctor. Talk provider/provider-map normalization compares by structural equality, so key-order-only diffs no longer trigger repeat no-op doctor --fix changes.When an explicit roster no longer contains main, OpenClaw migrates durable agent:main:* SQLite rows only if the replacement owner is unambiguous: the sole roster member or the configured upgrade owner in agents.defaults.sessionStore.agentId. The explicit owner works for both per-agent and fixed session stores; fixed-store runtime ownership remains scoped to that physical store. Conflicting canonical or alias rows are preserved during startup and reported with a Doctor hint. openclaw doctor --fix first imports any legacy JSON session store, then keeps the winning canonical claim and renames each losing claim to agent:<owner>:legacy-main-conflict-<n> in its original database. Quarantine changes only the key; the entry and full transcript remain available for inspection or archival.
Doctor scans all installed plugin manifests for deprecated top-level capability keys (speechProviders, realtimeTranscriptionProviders, realtimeVoiceProviders, mediaUnderstandingProviders, imageGenerationProviders, videoGenerationProviders, webFetchProviders, webSearchProviders). When found, it offers to move them into the contracts object and rewrite the manifest file in-place. This migration is idempotent; if contracts already has the same values, the legacy key is removed without duplicating data.
Doctor also checks the legacy cron job store (~/.openclaw/cron/jobs.json) for old job shapes before importing canonical rows into SQLite.Current cron cleanups include:
  • jobId → id
  • schedule.cron → schedule.expr
  • top-level payload fields (message, model, thinking, …) → payload
  • top-level delivery fields (deliver, channel, to, provider, …) → delivery
  • payload provider delivery aliases → explicit delivery.channel
  • legacy notify: true webhook fallback jobs → explicit webhook delivery from the retired raw cron.webhook value when valid; announce jobs keep their chat delivery and get delivery.completionDestination. Doctor then removes the old config key. Without a usable legacy webhook, the inert top-level notify marker is removed for no-target jobs (existing delivery, including announce, is preserved) since runtime delivery never reads it.
The Gateway also sanitizes malformed cron rows at load time so valid jobs keep running. Malformed rows are quarantined in the shared SQLite state database in the same transaction that removes them from active scheduling; doctor reports those records and imports any jobs-quarantine.json sidecars left by older releases.Gateway startup normalizes the runtime projection and ignores the top-level notify marker, but leaves persisted cron state for doctor repair. Doctor removes inert markers for jobs with no migration target (delivery.mode none/absent, an unusable legacy webhook target, or existing announce/chat delivery), leaving existing delivery untouched, so repeated doctor --fix runs no longer re-warn about the same job.On Linux, doctor also warns when the user’s crontab still invokes legacy ~/.openclaw/bin/ensure-whatsapp.sh. That host-local script is not maintained by current OpenClaw and can write false Gateway inactive messages to ~/.openclaw/logs/whatsapp-health.log when cron cannot reach the systemd user bus. Remove the stale crontab entry with crontab -e; use openclaw channels status --probe, openclaw doctor, and openclaw gateway status for current health checks.
Doctor scans every agent session directory for legacy write-lock files left behind when a file-backed session exited abnormally. For each lock file found it reports: the path, PID, whether the PID is still alive, lock age, and whether it is considered stale (dead PID, malformed owner metadata, older than 30 minutes, or a live PID proven to belong to a non-OpenClaw process). In --fix / --repair mode it removes locks with dead, orphaned, recycled, malformed-old, or non-OpenClaw owners automatically. Old locks still owned by a live OpenClaw process are reported but left in place so doctor does not cut off an active transcript writer.
Doctor scans legacy agent session JSONL files for the duplicated branch shape created by the 2026.4.24 prompt transcript rewrite bug: an abandoned user turn with OpenClaw internal runtime context plus an active sibling containing the same visible user prompt. In --fix / --repair mode, doctor backs up each affected file next to the original and rewrites the transcript to the active branch before importing its history into SQLite.
The state directory is the operational brainstem. If it vanishes, you lose sessions, credentials, logs, and config unless you have backups elsewhere.Doctor checks:
  • State dir missing: warns about catastrophic state loss, prompts to recreate the directory, and reminds you that it cannot recover missing data.
  • State dir permissions: verifies writability; offers to repair permissions (and emits a chown hint when owner/group mismatch is detected).
  • macOS cloud-synced state dir: warns when state resolves under iCloud Drive (~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/...) or ~/Library/CloudStorage/..., because sync-backed paths can cause slower I/O and lock/sync races.
  • Linux SD or eMMC state dir: warns when state resolves to an mmcblk* mount source, because SD/eMMC-backed random I/O can be slower and wear faster under session and credential writes.
  • Linux volatile state dir: warns when state resolves to tmpfs or ramfs, because sessions, credentials, config, and SQLite state (with WAL/journal sidecars) disappear on reboot. Docker overlay mounts are intentionally not flagged because their writable layers persist across host reboots while the container remains.
  • Session directory permissions: checks existing session and store directories for writability. Missing archive directories are healthy on fresh profiles and are created when needed.
  • Legacy transcript mismatch: warns when recent legacy session entries have missing transcript files. SQLite-owned sessions do not require archived JSONL files.
  • Legacy main session “1-line JSONL”: flags when an unimported main transcript has only one line (history was not accumulating).
  • Multiple state dirs: warns when the active state directory differs from the effective home’s default ~/.openclaw directory and that default exists (history can split between installs). The effective home honors OPENCLAW_HOME, HOME, and USERPROFILE; Doctor does not enumerate other accounts’ home directories.
  • Remote mode reminder: if gateway.mode=remote, doctor reminds you to run it on the remote host (the state lives there).
  • Config file permissions: warns if ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json is group/world readable and offers to tighten to 600.
Doctor inspects OAuth profiles in the auth store, warns when tokens are expiring/expired, and can refresh them when safe. If the Anthropic OAuth/token profile is stale, it suggests an Anthropic API key or the Anthropic setup-token path. Refresh prompts only appear when running interactively (TTY); --non-interactive skips refresh attempts.When an OAuth refresh fails permanently (for example refresh_token_reused, invalid_grant, or a provider telling you to sign in again), doctor reports that re-auth is required and prints the exact openclaw models auth login --provider ... command to run.Doctor also reports auth profiles that are temporarily unusable due to short cooldowns (rate limits/timeouts/auth failures) or longer disables (billing/credit failures).Legacy Codex OAuth profiles with encrypted sidecar credentials are repaired only by doctor. Run openclaw doctor --fix from an interactive terminal on the original host so it can recover the legacy encryption key, including from macOS Keychain when needed, and import supported credentials into the SQLite auth store. If the legacy material cannot be recovered, sign in again with openclaw models auth login --provider openai on the Gateway host.
If hooks.gmail.model is set, doctor validates the model reference against the catalog and allowlist and warns when it will not resolve or is disallowed.
When sandboxing is enabled, doctor checks Docker images and offers to build or switch to legacy names if the current image is missing.
Doctor repairs legacy official ClawHub install records that predate recorded source authority. With --fix, it backfills the existing official host/channel fields only when the original spec and every recorded package identity agree with the official catalog. Local sources, partial or conflicting authority, and unverifiable identities require reinstalling. Ordinary legacy npm records with a consistent official spec already satisfy trust. See Trusted plugin state refused for refusal reason codes and remedies.When a local Gateway is unreachable, doctor compares the CLI state directory with the installed service’s effective environment. It prints both paths when they differ, or reports that the service paths could not be verified. Unreadable or commandless service definitions and unavailable referenced environment files are unknown, not evidence that the paths match. Windows batch assignments with unresolved variable expansion or unsupported escaping also remain unverified; inspect their service environment with openclaw gateway status --deep before choosing a repair. Run inspection and repair with the Gateway’s OPENCLAW_STATE_DIR and OPENCLAW_CONFIG_PATH; matching config and executable versions alone does not establish matching plugin installation state.If an unreadable native definition also blocks installation or self-update, follow native service recovery. Preserve service-only environment values before rebuilding the launcher; configuration and plugin state do not need to be deleted.Doctor preserves shared plugin runtime caches and staging directories, including older versioned buckets. Another installation or profile can still depend on them; a directory name or marker does not establish that it is unused. openclaw doctor --fix / openclaw doctor --repair removes global plugin-runtime symlinks only when their targets no longer exist, not merely because they point into an older cache.The core/doctor/legacy-plugin-dependencies lint selector shipped in v2026.8.1 remains available as a deprecated, non-destructive informational check. It no longer scans cache roots or recommends deleting them. Use --severity-min info to display its deprecation notice.Package-local cleanup remains with the package installer. Doctor still removes orphaned or recovered managed npm copies of bundled @openclaw/* plugins that can shadow the current bundled manifest. It also relinks the host openclaw package into managed npm plugins that declare peerDependencies.openclaw, so package-local runtime imports such as openclaw/plugin-sdk/* keep resolving after updates or npm repairs.Doctor can also reinstall missing downloadable plugins when config references them but the local plugin registry cannot find them (material plugins.entries, configured channel/provider/search settings, configured agent runtimes). During package updates, doctor avoids reinstalling plugin packages while the core package is being swapped; run openclaw doctor --fix again after the update if a configured plugin still needs recovery. Outside the container image startup exception below, gateway startup and config reload do not run package repair; plugin installs remain explicit doctor/install/update work.Doctor also refreshes stale official runtime plugins that are bound to the current OpenClaw release cohort. This repair uses the declared current target on the recorded registry and verifies that artifact independently of the old installation. An existing exact npm pin becomes the exact replacement version; ordinary missing-plugin repairs preserve the recorded target and integrity. Capability consent still applies.Containerized gateway startup has a narrow upgrade exception: when openclaw gateway run starts on a new OpenClaw version, it runs safe state migrations and the existing post-core plugin convergence before readiness, then records a per-version checkpoint. This startup pass can clean stale bundled-plugin records, repair local plugin links, reinstall configured plugin packages when the convergence path requires it, and check active plugin payloads. If startup cannot repair safely, run the same image once with openclaw doctor --fix against the same mounted state/config before restarting the container normally.
Run openclaw doctor interactively to review legacy gateway services (launchd/systemd/schtasks) and confirm supported cleanup. Explicit repair maintenance skips this separate cleanup flow. Removal is reported separately from installation; use openclaw gateway install when the intended native service is missing. Doctor can also scan for extra gateway-like services and print cleanup hints. Profile-named OpenClaw gateway services are considered first-class and are not flagged as “extra.”Linux user-service cleanup preserves the unit file if stopping or disabling the service fails. An interrupted status probe does not permit file-only removal; that fallback is reported only when systemctl is unavailable.On Linux, if the user-level gateway service is missing but a system-level OpenClaw gateway service exists, doctor does not install a second user-level service automatically. Inspect with openclaw gateway status --deep or openclaw doctor --deep, then remove the duplicate or set OPENCLAW_SERVICE_REPAIR_POLICY=external when a system supervisor owns the gateway lifecycle.
When a Matrix channel account has a pending or actionable legacy state migration, doctor (in --fix / --repair mode) creates a pre-migration snapshot and then runs the best-effort migration steps: legacy Matrix state migration and legacy encrypted-state preparation. Both steps are non-fatal; errors are logged and startup continues. Without explicit repair (--fix, --repair, or --yes), this check is skipped.
Doctor inspects device-pairing state as part of the normal health pass, reporting:
  • pending first-time pairing requests
  • pending role or scope upgrades for already-paired devices
  • public-key mismatch repairs where the device id still matches but the device identity no longer matches the approved record
  • paired records missing an active token for an approved role
  • paired tokens whose scopes drift outside the approved pairing baseline
  • local cached device-token entries for the current machine that predate a gateway-side token rotation or carry stale scope metadata
  • a retired identity/device-auth.json file that is still present and blocks inspection of locally cached tokens, including in remote Gateway mode; stop the Gateway and run openclaw doctor --fix to finish migration or cleanup
Doctor does not auto-approve pair requests or auto-rotate device tokens. It prints the exact next steps:
  • inspect pending requests with openclaw devices list
  • approve the exact request with openclaw devices approve <requestId>
  • rotate a fresh token with openclaw devices rotate --device <deviceId> --role <role>
  • remove and re-approve a stale record with openclaw devices remove <deviceId>
This distinguishes first-time pairing from pending role/scope upgrades and from stale token/device-identity drift, closing the common “already paired but still getting pairing required” hole.
Doctor emits a Security note only when it finds a warning, such as a provider open to DMs without an allowlist or a dangerously configured policy. Use openclaw security audit for the full security inventory.Missing multi-agent DM routing ownership is reported as a finding. It does not stop the remaining channel security checks or pending state migrations. Configure the reported account binding before expecting that route to work. Telegram account discovery preserves the legacy default-agent account choice during upgrade previews without requiring an ambient agent.
If running as a systemd user service, doctor ensures lingering is enabled so the gateway stays alive after logout.
Doctor prints problems and actions for the default agent, not healthy-state inventory:
  • Skills: lists allowed but unusable skill names; use openclaw skills check for requirement details and full counts.
  • Plugins: reports only errored plugin IDs; use openclaw plugins list for loaded, imported, disabled, and bundle-plugin inventory.
  • Plugin compatibility warnings: flags plugins that have compatibility issues with the current runtime.
  • Plugin diagnostics: surfaces any load-time warnings or errors emitted by the plugin registry.
  • TaskFlow recovery: surfaces suspicious managed TaskFlows that need manual inspection or cancellation.
  • Claude CLI: reports only binary, authentication, profile, workspace, or project-directory problems; healthy probe details are omitted.
Doctor checks whether workspace bootstrap files (for example AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, or other injected context files) are near or over the configured character budget. It reports per-file raw vs. injected character counts, truncation percentage, truncation cause (max/file or max/total), and total injected characters as a fraction of the total budget. When files are truncated or near the limit, doctor prints tips for tuning agents.defaults.bootstrapMaxChars and agents.defaults.bootstrapTotalMaxChars.
Doctor checks whether tab completion is installed for the current shell (zsh, bash, fish, or PowerShell):
  • If the shell profile uses a slow dynamic completion pattern (source <(openclaw completion ...)), doctor upgrades it to the faster cached file variant.
  • If completion is configured in the profile but the cache file is missing, doctor regenerates the cache automatically.
  • If no completion is configured at all, doctor prompts to install it (interactive mode only; skipped with --non-interactive).
Run openclaw completion --write-state to regenerate the cache manually.
When openclaw doctor --fix removes a missing channel plugin, it also removes the dangling channel-scoped config that referenced that plugin: channels.<id> entries, heartbeat targets that named the channel, and agents.*.models["<channel>/*"] overrides. This prevents Gateway boot loops where the channel runtime is gone but config still asks the gateway to bind to it.
Doctor checks local gateway token auth readiness.
  • If token mode needs a token and no token source exists, doctor offers to generate one.
  • If gateway.auth.token is SecretRef-managed but unavailable, doctor warns and does not overwrite it with plaintext.
  • openclaw doctor --generate-gateway-token forces generation only when no token SecretRef is configured.
Some repair flows need to inspect configured credentials without weakening runtime fail-fast behavior.
  • openclaw doctor --fix uses the same read-only SecretRef summary model as status-family commands for targeted config repairs.
  • Example: Telegram allowFrom / groupAllowFrom @username repair tries to use configured bot credentials when available.
  • If the Telegram bot token is configured via SecretRef but unavailable in the current command path, doctor reports that the credential is configured-but-unavailable and skips auto-resolution instead of crashing or misreporting the token as missing.
Guided Doctor runs a health check and can offer recovery for a local Gateway, subject to service ownership and confirmation. A failed remote health check does not trigger local service recovery, even when the remote URL is a loopback SSH tunnel. Check the remote connection and recover the Gateway on its host. Explicit repair maintenance only resumes the matching service it stopped. A loaded, enabled macOS job between respawns is not treated as an intentionally stopped service.
Doctor checks whether the configured memory search embedding provider is ready for the default agent. The behavior depends on the configured provider:
  • Explicit local provider: checks for a local model file or a recognized remote/downloadable model URL. If missing, suggests switching to a remote provider.
  • Explicit remote provider (openai, voyage, etc.): verifies an API key is present in the environment or auth store. Prints actionable fix hints if missing.
  • Legacy auto provider: treats memorySearch.provider: "auto" as OpenAI, checks OpenAI readiness, and doctor --fix rewrites it to provider: "openai".
When a cached gateway probe result is available (gateway was healthy at the time of the check), doctor cross-references its result with the CLI-visible config and notes any discrepancy. Doctor does not start a fresh embedding ping on the default path; use the deep memory status command when you want a live provider check.Use openclaw memory status --deep to verify embedding readiness at runtime.Embedding-provider readiness is a health check, not a state migration. Gateway startup does not initialize memory embedding providers during migration preflight, so auth-profile SecretRefs can activate afterward. If embeddings remain unavailable, memory sync preserves an existing semantic index rather than replacing it with FTS-only data. Migration warnings allow degraded startup; errors that leave required state unsafe to read still block Gateway readiness.
If the gateway is healthy, doctor runs a channel status probe and reports warnings with suggested fixes.
Plain Doctor inspection checks the installed supervisor config (launchd/systemd/schtasks) for missing or outdated defaults (for example systemd network-online dependencies and restart delay) and can offer an interactive repair. Explicit repair maintenance preserves the installed service definition and skips this separate service-rewrite phase. Run openclaw gateway install --force from the intended installation to replace the launcher and managed environment.Notes:
  • openclaw doctor prompts before rewriting supervisor config. openclaw doctor --force alone remains guided: it allows aggressive repair choices but still requires interactive consent for an eligible service rewrite. It does not enter repair maintenance or bypass ownership and write-access checks.
  • openclaw doctor --yes accepts default non-service repair prompts and enters maintenance while preserving the service definition.
  • openclaw doctor --fix applies recommended repairs without prompts (--repair is an alias; --yes also enters repair maintenance). It stops the matching managed Gateway before plugin or mutable-state inspection, verifies repairs, and restarts the same service once, even when no changes are needed. It preserves the installed service definition, leaves services confirmed offline before maintenance offline, and refuses to stop an ancestor Gateway. Plain inspection does not enter maintenance, and custom state directories do not adopt native services.
  • Explicit repair refuses unavailable service inspection and unmatched services that may still run. After their owner stops them and the native manager confirms they are offline, Doctor repairs its selected state without changing or starting those services. A disabled systemd unit can still be restarting; Doctor checks runtime state as well as installation state.
  • An updater’s explicit Gateway activation policy leaves stop/restart ownership with the updater. Doctor still requires native proof that the service is offline; a live update --no-restart repair fails without stopping or restarting it. Stop the service through its owner before retrying the update. Older update parents without that policy retain ordinary Doctor maintenance.
  • openclaw doctor --fix --force preserves the service definition too. Use openclaw gateway install --force to request a rewrite; operator-owned systemd drop-ins remain unchanged.
  • OPENCLAW_SERVICE_REPAIR_POLICY=external keeps doctor read-only for gateway service lifecycle. It still reports service health and runs non-service repairs, but skips service install/start/restart/bootstrap, supervisor config rewrites, and legacy service cleanup because an external supervisor owns that lifecycle.
  • On macOS, a same-label system LaunchDaemon blocks user LaunchAgent install, start, restart, and bootstrap repair. Doctor reports the system owner and stops service recovery; --force does not bypass this ownership boundary. See Existing system LaunchDaemons.
  • On Linux, doctor does not rewrite command/entrypoint metadata while the matching systemd gateway unit is active. If a stopped unit’s command or working directory is overridden by an operator-owned systemd drop-in, inspect it with systemctl --user cat <unit>.service, then update or remove the drop-in; rewriting the managed base cannot change the effective launcher. Environment= drop-ins remain supported. Doctor also ignores inactive non-legacy extra gateway-like units during the duplicate-service scan so companion service files do not create cleanup noise.
  • On Linux, doctor checks authority over the installed and planned service files before persisting a recovered gateway token. If that check blocks service repair, the repair leaves config and token unchanged and reports how to restore inspection access or involve the deployment owner; --force cannot bypass it. Unrelated Doctor config repairs are unaffected.
  • If token auth requires a token and gateway.auth.token is SecretRef-managed, doctor service install/repair validates the SecretRef but does not persist resolved plaintext token values into supervisor service environment metadata.
  • Doctor detects managed .env/SecretRef-backed service environment values that older LaunchAgent, systemd, or Windows Scheduled Task installs embedded inline and rewrites the service metadata so those values load from the runtime source instead of the supervisor definition.
  • Doctor detects when the service command still pins an old --port after gateway.port changes and rewrites the service metadata to the current port.
  • If token auth requires a token and the configured token SecretRef is unresolved, doctor blocks the install/repair path with actionable guidance.
  • If both gateway.auth.token and gateway.auth.password are configured and gateway.auth.mode is unset, doctor blocks install/repair until mode is set explicitly.
  • For Linux user-systemd units, doctor token drift checks include both Environment= and EnvironmentFile= sources when comparing service auth metadata.
  • Doctor service repairs refuse to rewrite, stop, or restart a gateway service from an older OpenClaw binary when the config was last written by a newer version. See Gateway troubleshooting.
  • openclaw gateway install --force rewrites the managed base unit, but never removes operator-owned systemd drop-ins; it warns if a command or working-directory override remains effective.
Doctor inspects the service runtime (PID, last exit status) and warns when the service is installed but not actually running. It also checks for port collisions on the gateway port (default 18789) and reports likely causes (gateway already running, SSH tunnel).
Doctor accepts Bun 1.4+ runtimes that provide WAL-reset-safe node:sqlite and warns when the gateway service runs on an older or unsafe Bun or a version-managed Node path (nvm, fnm, volta, asdf, etc.). Repairs migrate unsupported Bun services to Node. Version-manager paths can break after upgrades because the service does not load your shell init. Doctor offers to migrate to a system Node install when available (Homebrew/apt/choco).Newly installed or repaired macOS LaunchAgents use a canonical system PATH (/opt/homebrew/bin:/opt/homebrew/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin) instead of copying the interactive shell PATH, so Homebrew-managed system binaries stay available while Volta, asdf, fnm, pnpm, and other version-manager directories do not change which Node child processes resolve. Linux services still keep explicit environment roots (NVM_DIR, FNM_DIR, VOLTA_HOME, ASDF_DATA_DIR, BUN_INSTALL, PNPM_HOME) and stable user-bin directories, but guessed version-manager fallback directories are only written to the service PATH when those directories exist on disk.
Doctor persists any config changes and stamps wizard metadata to record the doctor run.
Doctor suggests a workspace memory system when missing and prints a backup tip if the workspace is not already under git.See /concepts/agent-workspace for a full guide to workspace structure and git backup (recommended private GitHub or GitLab).