Tutorial

OpenClaw Channel Health Checks with CLI

February 21, 20263 min readReviewed March 8, 2026

Most indexing and delivery complaints are actually channel runtime failures. OpenClaw's CLI gives enough observability to detect these issues without opening the UI[1][2].

Core Command Set

openclaw channels list
openclaw channels status --probe
openclaw channels capabilities
openclaw health
openclaw logs --follow

What Each Command Answers

channels list: which connectors are configured.
status --probe: whether connectors are alive right now.
capabilities: what each channel can do (attachments, actions, etc.).
health: system-level readiness checks.
logs --follow: immediate root cause context[3].

Daily Health Script Pattern

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail
openclaw channels status --probe
openclaw health
openclaw channels capabilities --channel discord
openclaw channels capabilities --channel slack

When Probe Is Green but Messages Fail

Check pairing and allowlist rules next. Transport can be healthy while policy blocks delivery by design[4].

openclaw pairing list discord
openclaw pairing list slack

Incident Triage Order

Probe + health.
Capabilities for affected channel.
Pairing/allowlist state.
Live logs.
Connector-specific troubleshooting page[5].

References

OpenClaw Docs: CLI Channels - Accessed February 21, 2026
OpenClaw Docs: CLI Health - Accessed February 21, 2026
OpenClaw Docs: CLI Logs - Accessed February 21, 2026
OpenClaw Docs: Pairing - Accessed February 21, 2026
OpenClaw Docs: Channel Troubleshooting - Accessed February 21, 2026