Workshop mode (remote tunnel)

Workshop mode is for the case where OpenClaw is already running on a remote VPS (typical of ipe.city-style buildathon boxes) and you only want to drive it from your laptop. No local Docker, no local OpenClaw install — just an SSH tunnel and Mission Control.

Prerequisites

• git, pnpm, and node 20+ on your machine
• SSH access to a VPS that is running OpenClaw and publishing the HTTP gateway on some port (default 18789, but workshop boxes often use a mapped port like 47716)
• The clawhalla CLI on your PATH (see ClawHalla CLI — Install)

Step 1 — Install Mission Control locally

clawhalla mc install

This clones the clawhalla repo into ~/.clawhalla/source (or reuses the current checkout if you are already inside the monorepo), runs pnpm install, and creates the Mission Control data directory. Run this once per machine.

Step 2 — Start Mission Control

clawhalla mc start

Mission Control is spawned detached, so the dev server keeps running after the CLI exits. The command prints the URL, the pid, and the log file path, then returns. If you tail the log:

clawhalla mc logs -f

Step 3 — Open an SSH tunnel to the remote gateway

clawhalla connect root@vps.example.com:22022 \
  --alias workshop \
  --remote-gateway-port 47716 \
  --no-bridge

Breakdown of the flags:

• root@vps.example.com:22022 — the VPS SSH target (user, host, optional port)
• --alias workshop — a friendly name for this tunnel, used by disconnect / status
• --remote-gateway-port 47716 — the port OpenClaw is published on inside the VPS. If you omit this, the CLI assumes 18789 (the OpenClaw default)
• --no-bridge — skip the secondary WS bridge forward. Bare-OpenClaw VPSs only publish the HTTP gateway, not the bridge; the flag makes the CLI tolerate that

The first time you run this, the CLI will generate an ed25519 keypair under ~/.clawhalla/keys/ and try to install the public half on the VPS via ssh-copy-id. On subsequent runs it reuses the same key and connects without prompting.

--bind 0.0.0.0

If you run Mission Control inside a Docker container on Linux and it is trying to reach the tunnel from outside the host network namespace, pass --bind 0.0.0.0. The CLI prints a security warning when you do this — the tunnel becomes reachable from anywhere on your LAN, so only use it on trusted networks.

Step 4 — Open Mission Control

clawhalla mc open

At the top of the onboarding wizard you should see a green banner:

● Connected via ClawHalla tunnel workshop → vps.example.com · local :18789 → remote :47716

If the banner is red or amber, the Connectivity states section below tells you what to do.

Step 5 — Drive onboarding

Fill in the wizard. The gateway URL should already be http://127.0.0.1:18789 (or whatever local port the CLI allocated — Mission Control detects this automatically). You will need to provide:

• The gateway token (you can fetch it from the VPS: docker exec <container> cat /home/node/.openclaw/openclaw.json and look for gateway.auth.token)
• An Anthropic or Google API key (or pick Ollama / skip)
• The squad you want to create — hackathon ships with six agents (Thor, Odin, Freya, Tyr, Heimdall, Bragi) and nine skills per agent out of the box

After you finish onboarding, Mission Control generates IDENTITY.md / SOUL.md / skills under ~/.openclaw/workspace/squads/<squad>/<agent>/ for every agent on the team.

Step 6 — Tear down

clawhalla disconnect --all
clawhalla mc stop

Both are idempotent — running them when there is nothing to tear down is a no-op.

Connectivity states

Mission Control polls /api/connection/probe every four seconds and renders one of these banners:

Banner	What it means	Fix
● Connected via ClawHalla tunnel (green)	Tunnel is up and the remote gateway is answering HTTP	Nothing. Proceed with onboarding.
▲ Tunnel up, remote gateway not responding (amber)	SSH tunnel is alive but OpenClaw on the VPS is not answering	Check OpenClaw is running on the VPS: ssh <vps> "docker ps"
■ ClawHalla tunnel has exited (red)	~/.clawhalla/tunnels.json has entries but the SSH pid is gone — usually after a reboot	clawhalla connect ... again
▲ Local OpenClaw config detected (amber)	No tunnel, but ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json exists from a local install	Start local OpenClaw, or run clawhalla connect
■ No OpenClaw connection detected (red)	Nothing found anywhere	clawhalla connect <vps> or install OpenClaw locally

The banner auto-refreshes, so you can bring a tunnel up in a second terminal and watch the state flip to green without reloading the page.