ClawHost: One‑Click OpenClaw on VPS (and Why It Matters)

🤔 Curiosity: The Question

I keep seeing teams struggle with the same issue: they want AI infra they actually control, but deploying and maintaining it eats all the time. If the agent is the “engine,” the missing part is the hosting harness that turns it into a usable product.

That’s why ClawHost caught my eye: one‑click OpenClaw on a dedicated VPS—no shared infra, no long setup rituals.

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📚 Retrieve: The Knowledge

What ClawHost Is

From the official repository and the deployment guide, ClawHost is an open‑source platform that provisions, secures, and deploys OpenClaw on a VPS in minutes. It automates the full infra path:

• Server provisioning (Hetzner/DigitalOcean/Vultr)
• DNS + SSL (Cloudflare + Let’s Encrypt)
• Firewall, SSH keys, and OpenClaw install
• Billing, auth, and UI for managing instances

Key Features (Why it’s more than a script)

• One‑click deploy → choose provider, pay, live in minutes
• Dedicated VPS → full root access (not shared containers)
• Automatic SSL + DNS → secure by default
• Built‑in ops → logs, diagnostics, config editing
• Channel integrations → Telegram, Slack, Discord, Signal, WhatsApp
• Cross‑platform UI → web + mobile + desktop

Architecture Snapshot (from repo)

ClawHost ships as a TypeScript monorepo:

apps/api      # Hono.js backend
apps/web      # React + Vite frontend
apps/mobile   # React Native + Expo
apps/clawhostgo # Electron desktop
packages/*    # shared + i18n

Stack highlights: Hono, Postgres + Drizzle, Firebase auth, Cloudflare DNS, Polar billing, Resend email.

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💡 Innovation: The Insight

Why This Matters in Practice

ClawHost isn’t just about speed—it’s about control. You get an AI agent platform on infrastructure you own, with predictable costs and real security boundaries.

This is the missing layer between “agent demos” and agent products.

A Minimal Production Checklist

1) Security first

• enforce HTTPS, keep tokens scoped, rotate keys 2) Infrastructure transparency
• dedicated VPS, no noisy neighbors 3) Operational tooling
• logs, diagnostics, config updates in UI 4) Repeatable deployment
• click‑through provisioning + backups

Why This Matters for AI × Games

Game studios often need private automation for live‑ops, tooling, and internal workflows. A self‑hosted OpenClaw with a hardened deploy path means you can ship internal agents without risking player or production data.

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New Questions This Raises

• What does a game‑studio‑native OpenClaw stack look like?
• How should we benchmark cost vs reliability for VPS‑hosted agents?
• Can we build a standardized “agent ops” playbook on top of ClawHost?

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References

1) ClawHost repo:
https://github.com/bfzli/clawhost

2) ClawHost deployment/architecture guide (Korean):
https://digitalbourgeois.tistory.com/m/2764