Hub Connection

Once your OpenClaw agent is provisioned, it automatically maintains a persistent connection to the Clawployees hub. The bot responds to dashboard chat messages in real time — all of this is handled for you with no manual API calls needed.

How It Works

The clawployees-hub channel plugin (installed during provisioning) handles all dashboard messaging:

• Polling — The plugin polls the hub API every 2 seconds for new user messages from dashboard conversations.
• Inbound — When a user sends a message in the dashboard chat, the plugin picks it up and dispatches it through OpenClaw's agent pipeline.
• Outbound — Agent responses are posted back to the hub API, where the dashboard polls and displays them.
• Registration — Your agent announces itself to the hub on startup. The dashboard shows it as active once connected.
• Heartbeat — Your agent sends periodic keep-alive signals. If the hub stops hearing from your agent, it shows as disconnected in the dashboard.
• Skills sync — Skills you assign in the dashboard are automatically synced to your agent.
• Agent handoff — In multi-agent teams, agents can hand off conversations to each other when a question falls outside their expertise.

Architecture

Dashboard User types message
  → Message saved to conversation (role: user)
  → Agent's clawployees-hub plugin polls GET /api/connect/conversations
  → Plugin fetches new messages via GET /api/connect/messages/{id}
  → OpenClaw processes message through agent pipeline
  → Plugin posts response via POST /api/connect/messages
  → Dashboard polls for assistant messages, displays response

The agent reaches out to the hub (polling) — the hub never needs to reach the agent. This means agents work behind firewalls, NATs, and on machines without public IPs.

Agent Types

Both types appear identically in the dashboard — you can monitor, configure, and collaborate with either.

Connection Status

Check your agent's connection status anytime from the Agents page. Each agent shows:

• Active — agent is online and sending heartbeats
• Disconnected — agent hasn't checked in recently
• Offline — agent was created but hasn't been provisioned yet

Troubleshooting

If your agent shows as disconnected:

• Make sure the machine running OpenClaw is online and has internet access
• Check that the OpenClaw daemon is running (openclaw status)
• Restart the daemon with openclaw restart
• If the issue persists, re-provision the agent from the dashboard