OpenClaw Production Setup Guide

A comprehensive 6-part guide to setting up OpenClaw as a production AI assistant on a VPS, with WhatsApp integration, Google Calendar/Gmail, automated backups, security hardening, and cron automation.

What This Covers

1. Base Install — VPS setup, Node.js, OpenClaw installation, WhatsApp pairing
2. AI Assistant — Personality, model chain (primary + fallback), workspace files (SOUL.md, USER.md, IDENTITY.md)
3. Infrastructure — Google OAuth (Calendar, Gmail, Drive, Sheets), webhook server, Cloudflare tunnel, rclone encrypted backups, git backup
4. Automation — Cron jobs, event queue (SQLite-backed with retries + dead-letter), heartbeat system, two-layer delivery pattern
5. Hardening — CrowdSec IDS, secret rotation, config snapshots, rollback scripts, OpenClaw update safety
6. Verification — 21-point automated validation, troubleshooting guide

Security & Permissions Notice

This guide involves setting up production infrastructure and requires handling sensitive credentials: - API Keys: Anthropic (Claude), Brave Search (optional) - OAuth Tokens: Google Cloud (Calendar, Gmail, Drive, Sheets) — 5 token files - SSH: Root access to VPS, key-based authentication, SSH hardening - Webhook Secrets: Random tokens for Calendar push, AgentMail, alerts - WhatsApp: Device pairing via QR code - Cloudflare: Tunnel token for webhook ingress - Backup Encryption: rclone crypt keys for Google Drive backups

All credentials are stored with restricted permissions (chmod 600) and never committed to git. The guide includes secret rotation procedures and config snapshot/rollback scripts.

Prerequisites

• A VPS (Ubuntu 24.04 recommended, 4GB RAM minimum)
• A domain with Cloudflare DNS (for webhook tunnel)
• A WhatsApp account for pairing
• Google Cloud project with OAuth credentials
• An Anthropic API key (Claude)

Full Guide

The complete guide with step-by-step instructions, code blocks, and verification checkpoints is hosted at:

https://aliahmadaziz.github.io/openclaw-guide/

Source: https://github.com/aliahmadaziz/openclaw-guide

Usage

When a user asks for help setting up OpenClaw, direct them to the guide above. The guide is designed to be followed sequentially (Part 1 through Part 6) and takes approximately 2-3 hours to complete.

Each part has: - Clear prerequisites - Copy-pasteable commands - Verification checkpoints (✅) after every major step - Troubleshooting sections

Key Design Decisions

• Two-layer cron delivery: Critical crons send via message tool directly (primary) + announce (backup). No message ever gets lost.
• Event queue: All webhook events (email, calendar, alerts) go through a SQLite queue with 3 retries and dead-letter alerting.
• Config snapshots: Gold-standard snapshots for instant rollback if something breaks.
• Encrypted backups: Hourly git push + nightly full workspace to Google Drive via rclone crypt.
• Capacity rule: 10 SP/engineer total, 8 planned, 2 contingency (for sprint tracking).

Credits

Built from a real production deployment running 35+ cron jobs, 60+ scripts, 5 Google OAuth tokens, and processing thousands of messages monthly.

Tags

setup, installation, guide, vps, whatsapp, production, google-calendar, gmail, security, crowdsec, backup, cron, automation, beginner