openclaw/docs/gateway/logging.md

summary, read_when, title

summary	read_when	title
Logging surfaces, file logs, WS log styles, and console formatting	Changing logging output or formats Debugging CLI or gateway output	Gateway logging

Logging

For a user-facing overview (CLI + Control UI + config), see /logging.

OpenClaw has two log “surfaces”:

• Console output (what you see in the terminal / Debug UI).
• File logs (JSON lines) written by the gateway logger.

File-based logger

• Default rolling log file is under /tmp/openclaw/ (one file per day): openclaw-YYYY-MM-DD.log
  • Date uses the gateway host's local timezone.
• The log file path and level can be configured via ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json:
  • logging.file
  • logging.level

The file format is one JSON object per line.

The Control UI Logs tab tails this file via the gateway (logs.tail). CLI can do the same:

openclaw logs --follow

Verbose vs. log levels

• File logs are controlled exclusively by logging.level.
• --verbose only affects console verbosity (and WS log style); it does not raise the file log level.
• To capture verbose-only details in file logs, set logging.level to debug or trace.

Console capture

The CLI captures console.log/info/warn/error/debug/trace and writes them to file logs, while still printing to stdout/stderr.

You can tune console verbosity independently via:

• logging.consoleLevel (default info)
• logging.consoleStyle (pretty | compact | json)

Tool summary redaction

Verbose tool summaries (e.g. 🛠️ Exec: ...) can mask sensitive tokens before they hit the console stream. This is tools-only and does not alter file logs.

• logging.redactSensitive: off | tools (default: tools)
• logging.redactPatterns: array of regex strings (overrides defaults)
  • Use raw regex strings (auto gi), or /pattern/flags if you need custom flags.
  • Matches are masked by keeping the first 6 + last 4 chars (length >= 18), otherwise ***.
  • Defaults cover common key assignments, CLI flags, JSON fields, bearer headers, PEM blocks, and popular token prefixes.

Gateway WebSocket logs

The gateway prints WebSocket protocol logs in two modes:

• Normal mode (no --verbose): only “interesting” RPC results are printed:
  • errors (ok=false)
  • slow calls (default threshold: >= 50ms)
  • parse errors
• Verbose mode (--verbose): prints all WS request/response traffic.

WS log style

openclaw gateway supports a per-gateway style switch:

• --ws-log auto (default): normal mode is optimized; verbose mode uses compact output
• --ws-log compact: compact output (paired request/response) when verbose
• --ws-log full: full per-frame output when verbose
• --compact: alias for --ws-log compact

Examples:

# optimized (only errors/slow)
openclaw gateway

# show all WS traffic (paired)
openclaw gateway --verbose --ws-log compact

# show all WS traffic (full meta)
openclaw gateway --verbose --ws-log full

Console formatting (subsystem logging)

The console formatter is TTY-aware and prints consistent, prefixed lines. Subsystem loggers keep output grouped and scannable.

Behavior:

• Subsystem prefixes on every line (e.g. [gateway], [canvas], [tailscale])
• Subsystem colors (stable per subsystem) plus level coloring
• Color when output is a TTY or the environment looks like a rich terminal (TERM/COLORTERM/TERM_PROGRAM), respects NO_COLOR
• Shortened subsystem prefixes: drops leading gateway/ + channels/, keeps last 2 segments (e.g. whatsapp/outbound)
• Sub-loggers by subsystem (auto prefix + structured field { subsystem })
• logRaw() for QR/UX output (no prefix, no formatting)
• Console styles (e.g. pretty | compact | json)
• Console log level separate from file log level (file keeps full detail when logging.level is set to debug/trace)
• WhatsApp message bodies are logged at debug (use --verbose to see them)

This keeps existing file logs stable while making interactive output scannable.

Related

• Logging
• OpenTelemetry export
• Diagnostics export