Summary

I run OpenClaw on a remote Linux host (moltbot-host). When long tasks run, my WhatsApp agent often stops replying for a long time. From my perspective, the biggest pain is: I don't know if it's busy, stuck, or dead.

Today I ran:

• openclaw status --all
• openclaw gateway status

The report said:

• Gateway service: systemd enabled but stopped
• Port 18789 already in use by openclaw-gateway process

So the service is stopped, but the port is still held by a zombie process. I had to manually run:

• killall openclaw-gateway
• killall openclaw
• rm -f ~/.openclaw/gateway.lock
• openclaw gateway restart

After that, the agent started replying again.

Code word: lobster-biscuit

What I would like

I am not a developer. From a user perspective, I wish:

1. There is always a very light "control lane" that can respond quickly (e.g. "I'm alive / I'm busy / I'm restarting") even when long tasks are running.
2. If the agent does not send any heartbeat or reply within e.g. 5 minutes, a built-in watchdog automatically restarts the gateway service (cheap restart is OK, I do not expect deep debugging).
3. This pattern is documented as an official way to run OpenClaw reliably on a remote host.

In my head this is like 3 layers:

• Layer 1: reply fast (status / heartbeat)
• Layer 2: restart when silent for too long
• Layer 3: execute heavy tasks

Right now I am manually doing layer 2 from the terminal. I would love to have an official, built‑in solution so non‑technical users can rely on "there is always some reply".