ClawDock - Lobsters in Docker containers on a cargo ship

If you’re following AI, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve likely heard about OpenClaw.

I started setting it up on my computer and had a small “wait a second” moment: this thing basically has permissions to destroy anything I have, even inadvertently."

There are already cases of people losing crypto assets, deleting photos, etc.

Then I read Simon’s short post on running OpenClaw in Docker.

Having used Docker extensively myself, I know that even once it’s running, you’re going to run into the same 10 questions every time you want to actually use it.

So, introducing: ClawDock. The bash helpers you needed but didn’t know about.

It’ll make it easier to work with OpenClaw in a dockerized environment on your machine. No remote servers. No Mac Minis.

QuickStart (opinionated)

Make sure you have the repo cloned:

cd ~/workspace
git clone git@github.com:openclaw/openclaw.git

Download the bash script:

mkdir -p ~/.clawdock
curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openclaw/openclaw/main/scripts/shell-helpers/clawdock-helpers.sh -o ~/.clawdock/clawdock-helpers.sh

And source it in your .rc of choice:

echo 'source ~/.clawdock/clawdock-helpers.sh' >> ~/.zshrc && source ~/.zshrc

Once you run clawdock-help, you’ll see all of the options below. Just follow the “First Time Setup” and you should be good to go.

For reference, here’s the PR: https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/pull/12817

NOTE: This is just the first version of clawdock. More coming soon.

🦞 ClawDock - Docker Helpers for OpenClaw

⚡ Basic Operations
  clawdock-start       Start the gateway
  clawdock-stop        Stop the gateway
  clawdock-restart     Restart the gateway
  clawdock-status      Check container status
  clawdock-logs        View live logs (follows)

🐚 Container Access
  clawdock-shell       Shell into container (openclaw alias ready)
  clawdock-cli         Run CLI commands (e.g., clawdock-cli status)
  clawdock-exec <cmd>  Execute command in gateway container

🌐 Web UI & Devices
  clawdock-dashboard    Open web UI in browser (auto-guides you)
  clawdock-devices      List device pairings (auto-guides you)
  clawdock-approve <id> Approve device pairing (with examples)

⚙️  Setup & Configuration
  clawdock-fix-token   Configure gateway token (run once)

🔧 Maintenance
  clawdock-rebuild     Rebuild Docker image
  clawdock-clean       ⚠️  Remove containers & volumes (nuclear)

🛠️  Utilities
  clawdock-health      Run health check
  clawdock-token       Show gateway auth token
  clawdock-cd          Jump to openclaw project directory
  clawdock-config      Open config directory (~/.openclaw)
  clawdock-workspace   Open workspace directory

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🚀 First Time Setup
  1. clawdock-start          # Start the gateway
  2. clawdock-fix-token      # Configure token
  3. clawdock-dashboard      # Open web UI
  4. clawdock-devices        # If pairing needed
  5. clawdock-approve <id>   # Approve pairing

💬 WhatsApp Setup
  clawdock-shell
    > openclaw channels login --channel whatsapp
    > openclaw status

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

💡 All commands guide you through next steps!
📚 Docs: https://docs.openclaw.ai