OpenClaw Troubleshooting: Common Issues and How to Fix Them

Your AI agent was running fine. Then it stopped replying. Or it connects but does nothing. Or you deployed to a VPS and nothing works. I've been running OpenClaw as a 24/7 autonomous business agent — handling Slack, cron jobs, sub-agents, the whole stack. I've hit most of the failure modes you'll hit. This is the playbook I wish I'd had on day one. Start Here: The Diagnostic Ladder Before you do anything else, run these five commands in order: openclaw status openclaw gateway status openclaw logs --follow openclaw doctor openclaw channels status --probe Here's what healthy output looks like: openclaw gateway status → Runtime: running and RPC probe: ok openclaw doctor → no blocking issues openclaw channels status --probe → all connected channels show ready If any of these fail, you've already narrowed it down. 90% of issues are visible in this first pass. Issue #1: Gateway Not Running This is the most common one. Agent is unresponsive? Start with the gateway. openclaw gateway status If