Bot Status API

A configurable HTTP service that exposes your OpenClaw bot's operational status as JSON. Designed for dashboard integration, monitoring, and transparency.

What It Provides

• Bot Core: Online status, model, context usage, uptime, heartbeat timing
• Services: Health checks for any HTTP endpoint, CLI tool, or file path
• Email: Unread counts from any email provider (himalaya, gog, etc.)
• Cron Jobs: Reads directly from OpenClaw's cron/jobs.json
• Docker: Container health via Portainer API
• Dev Servers: Auto-detects running dev servers by process grep
• Skills: Lists installed and available OpenClaw skills
• System: CPU, RAM, Disk metrics from /proc

Setup

1. Copy the service files

Copy server.js, collectors/, and package.json to your desired location.

2. Create config.json

Copy config.example.json to config.json and customize:

{
  "port": 3200,
  "name": "MyBot",
  "workspace": "/path/to/.openclaw/workspace",
  "openclawHome": "/path/to/.openclaw",
  "cache": { "ttlMs": 10000 },
  "model": "claude-sonnet-4-20250514",
  "skillDirs": ["/path/to/openclaw/skills"],
  "services": [
    { "name": "myservice", "type": "http", "url": "http://...", "healthPath": "/health" }
  ]
}

Service Check Types

| Type | Description | Config |

|------|-------------|--------|

| http | Fetch URL, check HTTP 200 | url, healthPath, method, headers, body |

| command | Run shell command, check exit 0 | command, timeout |

| file-exists | Check path exists | path |

3. Run

node server.js

4. Persist (systemd user service)

# ~/.config/systemd/user/bot-status.service
[Unit]
Description=Bot Status API
After=network.target

[Service]
Type=simple
WorkingDirectory=/path/to/bot-status
ExecStart=/usr/bin/node server.js
Restart=always
RestartSec=5
Environment=PORT=3200
Environment=HOME=/home/youruser
Environment=PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now bot-status
loginctl enable-linger $USER  # survive logout

5. Context/Vitals from OpenClaw

The bot should periodically write vitals to heartbeat-state.json in its workspace:

{
  "vitals": {
    "contextPercent": 62,
    "contextUsed": 124000,
    "contextMax": 200000,
    "model": "claude-opus-4-5",
    "updatedAt": 1770304500000
  }
}

Add this to your HEARTBEAT.md so the bot updates it each heartbeat cycle.

Endpoints

| Endpoint | Description |

|----------|-------------|

| GET /status | Full status JSON (cached) |

| GET /health | Simple {"status":"ok"} |

Architecture

• Zero dependencies — Node.js built-ins only (http, fs, child_process)
• Non-blocking — All shell commands use async exec, never execSync
• Background refresh — Cache refreshes on interval, requests always served from cache instantly (~10ms)
• Config-driven — Everything in config.json, no hardcoded values