oclaw

A terminal UI for OpenClaw — interactive agent chat with streaming, session persistence, and multi-agent switching.

Built because the built-in openclaw tui is broken. oclaw connects directly to the gateway WebSocket with Ed25519 device signing, giving you a fast, reliable, interactive chat experience that doesn't time out.

Features

• Interactive chat — persistent sessions, no timeouts
• Streaming responses — real-time token-by-token display for supported models
• Thinking model support — hidden by default, toggle with Ctrl+T
• Multi-agent switching — switch between agents mid-conversation (Ctrl+A)
• Session management — browse and resume sessions (Ctrl+S), reset with /new
• Memory persistence — /save command tells agents to write context to MEMORY.md
• Markdown rendering — code blocks, lists, headings, bold/italic via Glamour
• Clickable hyperlinks — URLs rendered as OSC 8 terminal hyperlinks (iTerm2, Kitty, WezTerm)
• Animated thinking indicator — shimmer gradient with rotating status messages
• Slash command autocomplete — type / to see available commands
• Auto-reconnect — exponential backoff with Ed25519 re-authentication
• Scrollable chat — mouse wheel, PgUp/PgDn, Ctrl+Home/End
• Zero config — auto-discovers gateway from ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json
• Security hardened — input sanitization, secure device key handling, no debug logging by default

Install

Homebrew

brew tap quantum-bytes/oclaw
brew install oclaw

Go

go install github.com/quantum-bytes/oclaw@latest

Or download a binary from Releases.

Requirements

• Go 1.22+ (for building)
• OpenClaw gateway running (default: ws://127.0.0.1:39421)
• Device identity at ~/.openclaw/identity/device.json (created by openclaw CLI)

Usage

# Launch with auto-discovered config
oclaw

# Connect to specific gateway
oclaw --url ws://localhost:39421 --token mytoken

# Start with a specific agent
oclaw --agent quasar

Debug mode

OCLAW_DEBUG=1 oclaw
# Debug log written to a temp file (shown in stderr on startup)

Keybindings

Key	Action
Enter	Send message
Shift+Enter	New line in input
Ctrl+C	Clear input / abort response / quit (double-tap)
Ctrl+D	Quit immediately
Ctrl+A	Switch agent
Ctrl+S	Browse sessions
Ctrl+N	New session (reset)
Ctrl+T	Toggle thinking text visibility
Ctrl+/	Help overlay
Esc	Close overlay
PgUp / PgDn	Scroll chat by page
Ctrl+Home	Scroll to top of chat
Ctrl+End	Scroll to bottom of chat
Home / End	Move cursor in input
Option+Click	Select text (iTerm2)

Slash Commands

Type / in the input to see autocomplete suggestions.

Command	Action
/agent <id>	Switch to agent
/session	Browse sessions
/new	Reset current session
/save	Save conversation context to agent's MEMORY.md
/think <level>	Set thinking level (off/low/medium/high)
/help	Show keybindings and commands
/quit	Quit

Configuration

oclaw reads configuration from multiple sources (highest priority first):

1. CLI flags (--url, --token, --agent)
2. Environment variables (OPENCLAW_GATEWAY_URL, OPENCLAW_GATEWAY_TOKEN, OPENCLAW_AGENT)
3. ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json (gateway URL, token, agent list)
4. Defaults (ws://127.0.0.1:39421, token ollama)

Authentication

oclaw supports two authentication methods:

1. Token auth — sends the configured token (read-only access)
2. Device signing — loads Ed25519 key from ~/.openclaw/identity/device.json, signs the connect payload using the v3 protocol format, granting full read/write access

Device signing is automatic if the identity file exists (created by the openclaw CLI on first run).

Architecture

oclaw ──WebSocket──► OpenClaw Gateway ──► Model APIs (Gemini, GPT-5.2-Codex, Ollama)
  │                       │
  │ Ed25519 device auth   ▼
  │                 Session Store (JSONL)
  │                       │
  └── chat events ◄───────┘ (delta/final streaming)

oclaw talks directly to the gateway via the OpenClaw WebSocket RPC protocol:

• Connect: challenge-response with optional Ed25519 device signing
• Chat: chat.send to send messages, chat events for streaming responses
• Agent lifecycle: agent events track thinking/responding/tool-use status
• Sessions: sessions.list, chat.history for persistence

Building

git clone https://github.com/quantum-bytes/oclaw
cd oclaw
make build
./oclaw

Cross-platform releases

# Requires goreleaser
goreleaser release --snapshot --clean

Builds for macOS (arm64/amd64), Linux (arm64/amd64), and Windows (amd64).

Security

• Untrusted model output is sanitized (ANSI/OSC escape sequences stripped) before terminal rendering
• URLs in OSC 8 hyperlinks are sanitized against control character injection
• Device private keys are checked for secure file permissions (warns if not 0600)
• Debug logging is opt-in only (OCLAW_DEBUG=1) with secure temp files (0600)
• No secrets are logged or cached beyond the gateway connection lifetime

License

MIT