OpenClaw Architecture Explained: How It Actually Works

The Gateway: OpenClaw's Brain

Everything in OpenClaw flows through the Gateway. It's the single source of truth for sessions, routing, and channel connections. Think of it as a message broker that sits between your chat apps and your AI model.

When you send a Telegram message, the Gateway receives it, determines which agent session it belongs to, routes it to the configured AI model, and sends the response back through the same channel. All of this happens in milliseconds.

The Gateway also handles multi-channel support through a single process. One OpenClaw instance can simultaneously serve Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, Signal, and iMessage — each with isolated sessions so conversations don't bleed into each other.

Multi-Model Routing

OpenClaw is model-agnostic by design. It doesn't care whether you're using Anthropic's Claude, OpenAI's GPT, Google's Gemini, or a local model running on your own hardware. The routing layer abstracts this away.

This means you can:

• Switch models on the fly without reconfiguring anything.
• Use a cheap, fast model for simple tasks and a powerful one for complex reasoning.
• Run local models for maximum privacy — no API calls leaving your machine at all.

The OpenClaw community has even built ClawRouter, an agent-native LLM router that automatically selects the optimal model based on the request type. Smart routing without manual intervention.

The Skills System

This is where OpenClaw gets really interesting. Skills are modular capabilities that extend what the agent can do — similar to VS Code extensions but for an AI agent.

Out of the box, OpenClaw includes skills for:

• Email reading and sending (Gmail, Outlook)
• Calendar management (Google Calendar, Apple Calendar)
• Web browsing and form interaction
• File system read/write operations
• Shell command execution
• 50+ service integrations (GitHub, Spotify, Hue, Obsidian, etc.)

The plugin architecture makes it straightforward to write custom skills. Each skill defines its capabilities, the tools it provides to the AI model, and the permissions it requires. The community maintains a growing library of shared skills.

Runs Anywhere

OpenClaw is a Node.js 22+ application. That's it. No Docker required (though it works with Docker). No Kubernetes. No cloud-specific dependencies. It runs anywhere Node.js runs:

• VPS — The most common deployment for 24/7 availability.
• Raspberry Pi — For lightweight agents on minimal hardware.
• Your laptop — For development and personal use.
• Any cloud provider — AWS, GCP, Azure, Hetzner, DigitalOcean. No lock-in.

Per-Sender Session Isolation

Security is baked into the architecture. By default, OpenClaw creates isolated sessions per sender. Your conversation context, tool permissions, and memory are separate from anyone else who might interact with the same agent.

You can further tighten security through the configuration file:

• Restrict which phone numbers or usernames can interact with the agent.
• Require @mentions in group chats before the agent responds.
• Limit which skills are available to which users.
• Run in sandboxed mode to restrict system access.

The Control Dashboard

OpenClaw includes a built-in web dashboard served by the Gateway. It launches at http://127.0.0.1:18789 by default and gives you:

• Real-time conversation monitoring.
• Agent configuration without editing JSON files.
• Skill management (enable, disable, configure).
• Session management and user access control.

There's also mobile node pairing for iOS and Android, so you can manage your agent from your phone.

The Hard Part: Deployment

Here's the truth about OpenClaw's architecture. It's elegant, modular, and well-designed. But getting it running — actually deployed and connected to your channels — requires:

1. Provisioning a VPS with the right specs.
2. SSH access and key management.
3. Installing Node.js 22+ on the server.
4. Running the OpenClaw installer and onboarding wizard.
5. Configuring your AI provider API key.
6. Pairing your messaging channels.
7. Setting up the daemon for 24/7 operation.

For developers, this is a 30-minute task. For everyone else, it's a barrier.

That's Why OneClickClaw Exists

OneClickClaw automates every step above. We provision a Hetzner VPS, install Ubuntu 24.04, set up Node.js, install OpenClaw, configure your AI provider, pair your Telegram channel, and start the daemon — all in under 30 seconds of server-side work.

You get the full power of OpenClaw's architecture. We handle the infrastructure. That's the whole pitch.