Streamline OpenClaw Docker Tasks with ClawDock

Managing Docker containers often feels like a repetitive chore. Typing out long docker compose strings just to check a log file or restart a service is a waste of your time and mental energy.

If you want to spend less time wrestling with CLI flags and more time actually using OpenClaw, you should try ClawDock. It is a small shell-helper layer for Docker-based OpenClaw installs that gives you short commands like clawdock-start and clawdock-dashboard instead of long terminal invocations.

If you have not set up Docker yet, start with Docker.

Install

Use the canonical helper path to get the script running on your machine:

mkdir -p ~/.clawdock && curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openclaw/openclaw/main/scripts/clawdock/clawdock-helpers.sh -o ~/.clawdock/clawdock-helpers.sh
echo 'source ~/.clawdock/clawdock-helpers.sh' >> ~/.zshrc && source ~/.zshrc

If you previously installed ClawDock from scripts/shell-helpers/clawdock-helpers.sh, reinstall from the new scripts/clawdock/clawdock-helpers.sh path. The old raw GitHub path was removed.

What you get

Basic operations

Command	Description
clawdock-start	Start the gateway
clawdock-stop	Stop the gateway
clawdock-restart	Restart the gateway
clawdock-status	Check container status
clawdock-logs	Follow gateway logs

Container access

Command	Description
clawdock-shell	Open a shell inside the gateway container
clawdock-cli <command>	Run OpenClaw CLI commands in Docker
clawdock-exec <command>	Execute an arbitrary command in the container

Web UI and pairing

Command	Description
clawdock-dashboard	Open the Control UI URL
clawdock-devices	List pending device pairings
clawdock-approve <id>	Approve a pairing request

Setup and maintenance

Command	Description
clawdock-fix-token	Configure the gateway token inside the container
clawdock-update	Pull, rebuild, and restart
clawdock-rebuild	Rebuild the Docker image only
clawdock-clean	Remove containers and volumes

Utilities

Command	Description
clawdock-health	Run a gateway health check
clawdock-token	Print the gateway token
clawdock-cd	Jump to the OpenClaw project directory
clawdock-config	Open ~/.openclaw
clawdock-show-config	Print config files with redacted values
clawdock-workspace	Open the workspace directory

First-time flow

When you are setting things up for the first time, follow this sequence to get the gateway running:

clawdock-start
clawdock-fix-token
clawdock-dashboard

If the browser says pairing is required, you can handle the request directly from your terminal:

clawdock-devices
clawdock-approve <request-id>

Config and secrets

ClawDock works with the same Docker config split described in Docker. You will mainly interact with these files:

• <project>/.env for Docker-specific values like image name, ports, and the gateway token.
• ~/.openclaw/.env for provider keys and bot tokens.
• ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json for behavior config.
• The clawdock-show-config command for quick inspections.

Use clawdock-show-config when you want to inspect those files quickly. It redacts .env values in its printed output so your secrets stay hidden.

Related pages

Check out these resources to learn more about managing your installation:

• Docker
• Docker VM Runtime
• Updating
• AI Setup Assistant

AI Setup Assistant