Security Best Practices for OpenClaw AI Agents

Your AI agent has access to your terminal, your files, your APIs, and possibly your email. That is a lot of power. Here are the security practices that keep it safe without killing productivity. Originally published on clamper.tech The Trust Spectrum Security for AI agents is not binary. You do not want to lock everything down (your agent becomes useless) or open everything up (you wake up to a deleted database). The goal is finding the right position on the trust spectrum for your use case. OpenClaw gives you three exec security modes: deny - Agent cannot run any shell commands. Safe but extremely limited. allowlist - Agent can only run pre-approved commands. Good for production. full - Agent can run anything. Maximum productivity, requires trust. Most developers start with full during development, then tighten to allowlist for production. 1. Configure Exec Permissions The exec tool is where most risk lives. Your agent can run arbitrary shell commands. # openclaw.yaml exec : security