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OpenClaw

openclaw logs --follow Command Guide

openclaw logs --follow is the fastest way to observe OpenClaw runtime behavior in real time.

Use it whenever startup fails, channel messages are not processed, or provider calls behave unexpectedly.

Quick Start

Section titled “Quick Start”
Terminal window
openclaw logs --follow

Common paired checks:

Terminal window
openclaw doctor
openclaw gateway status
openclaw channels status --probe

How to Read Output

Section titled “How to Read Output”

Healthy startup pattern

Section titled “Healthy startup pattern”

You should see stable boot logs and normal activity without repeated fatal messages.

Repeating startup block pattern

Section titled “Repeating startup block pattern”

If you repeatedly see:

  • Gateway start blocked: set gateway.mode=local

Go directly to:

Connectivity or auth pattern

Section titled “Connectivity or auth pattern”

Look for lines like:

  • unauthorized
  • gateway connect failed
  • missing_scope

Then continue with:

Useful Variants

Section titled “Useful Variants”
Terminal window
openclaw logs
openclaw logs --limit 500
openclaw logs --json
  • openclaw logs: latest buffered entries
  • --limit: inspect deeper history
  • --json: machine-readable output for parsing

Practical Workflow

Section titled “Practical Workflow”
  1. Start openclaw logs --follow in one terminal.
  2. Trigger one real command from your channel.
  3. Correlate log events with expected processing steps.
  4. If stuck, collect the relevant log segment and ask the docs assistant.
Section titled “Related Guides”
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