Best Practices
Memory, compaction, multi-agent, cron, and security for running OpenClaw at home.
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Memory: file-based source of truth
Use a structured workspace so the agent persists context across sessions:
~/clawd/ ├── MEMORY.md # Durable facts, how you work ├── IDENTITY.md # Agent personality ├── memory/ │ └── YYYY-MM-DD.md # Daily logs └── projects/
Enable compaction
Prevent context overflow in long-running sessions:
openclaw config set agent.compaction.enabled true openclaw config set agent.compaction.threshold 50000
Multi-agent: per-task sessions
Don’t run one eternal session for everything. Use a long-lived coordinator for chat and spawn worker sessions per task. Crons and webhooks should run in isolated sessions that complete and exit.
Gateway bind for exec / nodes
If agent-run commands (e.g. openclaw cron list) time out with “gateway timeout,” the gateway may be bound only to localhost. Bind to LAN so exec and nodes can reach it:
openclaw config set gateway.bind lan openclaw gateway restart
OAuth / API keys
If you see “OAuth token refresh failed” for Anthropic, re-auth or set a fresh API key: openclaw configure anthropic or openclaw auth anthropic, then restart the gateway.
Remote access
Prefer Tailscale or VPN to expose the gateway to your agent machines and clients. Alternative: SSH tunnel ssh -N -L 18789:127.0.0.1:18789 user@brain.
Multi-agent deep dive: getopenclaw.ai/help/multi-agent-architecture