OpenClaw Mission Control Documentation

The Mission Control documentation is organized into several key areas for developers and operators:

Setup and Operations

• Getting started: Initial setup and usage.
• Development: Instructions for local development.
• Testing: Guidance on running tests.
• Deployment: Procedures for deploying the platform.
• Operations: Managing a running instance.
• Troubleshooting: General troubleshooting and specific guides for Gateway agent provisioning and check-in issues.

Reference and Protocols

• Configuration reference: Detailed documentation of configuration keys.
• Authentication: Information on security and identity management.
• API notes: Technical details regarding the API surface.
• Gateway WebSocket protocol: Specification for the Gateway WebSocket communication.

To quickly bootstrap Mission Control using Docker Compose, follow these steps from the repository root:

1. Copy the example environment file to .env.
2. Crucial: If you are using AUTH_MODE=local, you must set the LOCAL_AUTH_TOKEN environment variable in your .env file to a non-placeholder value containing at least 50 characters.
3. Run the Docker Compose command to build and start the services in detached mode.

Once running, the services are available at:

• Frontend: http://localhost:3000
• Backend health check: http://localhost:8000/healthz

cp .env.example .env

# Ensure LOCAL_AUTH_TOKEN is set in .env if AUTH_MODE=local

docker compose -f compose.yml --env-file .env up -d --build

To perform a logical backup of the Postgres database, use pg_dump from the host. This requires the environment variables POSTGRES_DB, POSTGRES_USER, POSTGRES_PORT, and POSTGRES_PASSWORD to be set in your .env file.

# load variables from .env (trusted file only)
set -a
. ./.env
set +a

: "${POSTGRES_DB:?set POSTGRES_DB in .env}"
: "${POSTGRES_USER:?set POSTGRES_USER in .env}"
: "${POSTGRES_PORT:?set POSTGRES_PORT in .env}"
: "${POSTGRES_PASSWORD:?set POSTGRES_PASSWORD in .env (strong, unique value; not \"postgres\")}"

PGPASSWORD="$POSTGRES_PASSWORD" pg_dump \
  -h 127.0.0.1 -p "$POSTGRES_PORT" -U "$POSTGRES_USER" \
  -d "$POSTGRES_DB" \
  --format=custom > mission_control.backup

Deploy Mission Control in a single-host environment using Docker Compose.

Prerequisites

• Docker + Docker Compose v2 (docker compose)
• A host where the browser can reach the backend URL configured in NEXT_PUBLIC_API_URL.

Setup Steps

1. Configure Environment: Copy the example environment file and edit it with your specific settings.
2. Start the Stack: Run the compose command to build and start the services in detached mode.
3. Verify: Check the backend health endpoint to ensure the services are running correctly.

Accessing the Application

• Frontend: http://localhost:${FRONTEND_PORT:-3000}
• Backend Health: http://localhost:${BACKEND_PORT:-8000}/healthz

To allow other devices on your local network to access the development server, bind the Next.js dev server to all interfaces using the dev:lan script.

npm run dev:lan

For single-user environments or VMs, use user-level systemd units. These services start at user login by default. To ensure they start at machine boot without requiring a manual login, run loginctl enable-linger $USER after installation.

Steps:

1. Copy the generated .service files to ~/.config/systemd/user/.
2. Reload the systemd daemon.
3. Enable and start the backend, frontend, and RQ worker services.

cp openclaw-mission-control-backend.service openclaw-mission-control-frontend.service openclaw-mission-control-rq-worker.service ~/.config/systemd/user/
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable openclaw-mission-control-backend openclaw-mission-control-frontend openclaw-mission-control-rq-worker
systemctl --user start openclaw-mission-control-backend openclaw-mission-control-frontend openclaw-mission-control-rq-worker

If you are using wss:// connections with self-signed certificates, you can disable TLS certificate verification for a specific gateway by following these steps:

1. Navigate to the gateway configuration page (Settings → Gateways).
2. When creating or editing a gateway, enable the toggle: "Allow self-signed TLS certificates".

Security Warning: Enabling this weakens transport security. Only use this when you explicitly trust the endpoint and network path. For production environments, prefer valid CA-signed certificates.

For OpenClaw CLI installations, the default configuration file is located at ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json.

To set up a new installation:

1. Create the configuration directory:

   mkdir -p ~/.openclaw

2. Save your configuration JSON to ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json.
3. Start the gateway:

   openclaw gateway

4. Verify the system health:

   openclaw health

5. Access the control UI:

   openclaw dashboard

mkdir -p ~/.openclaw
# Save JSON to ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json
openclaw gateway
openclaw health
openclaw dashboard

Upgrade

To upgrade the deployment using Docker Compose, run:

docker compose -f compose.yml --env-file .env up -d --build

Rollback

Rollback involves deploying a previous image or commit.

Warning: If you have applied non-backward-compatible database migrations, rolling back the application code may require a database restore to a previous state.