Deploy OpenClaw on Dokploy in minutes

You can now deploy OpenClaw on Dokploy using a template, then finish setup from inside Dokploy’s built-in terminal. You get an always-on gateway, your own domain, logs, and deployments in one place, plus the option to keep the whole thing self-hosted.

Branded as “the AI that actually does things,” OpenClaw (formerly Moltbot) is the tool that people have been craving—one that can act as a full agent in any tool you use. It’s gone from niche repo to viral tool fast, showing up everywhere from Discord servers, WhatsApp chats, and team channels, to side projects that look suspiciously like full products.

If you’ve been waiting for a clean way to run OpenClaw without babysitting a one-off VPS setup, this is it.

What is OpenClaw?

If you’ve missed the hypetrain, here’s a quick rundown of the AI tool.

OpenClaw is a personal AI assistant you run on your own infrastructure. Instead of being just another chatbot, it’s built around a gateway that connects to the channels you already live in—Discord, WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, iMessage, and more—then routes messages to an agent runtime backed by the model provider you choose.

A few details matter if you’re evaluating it seriously:

• It’s self-hosted by design, so you control where it runs and what it can access.
• It’s multi-channel, so you can talk to the same assistant from different surfaces without rebuilding your workflow around a new app.
• It’s model-agnostic, so you can bring your own provider and swap models as your needs change.

Also, OpenClaw is the latest name. If you still see Moltbot (or even Clawdbot) in templates, screenshots, or environment variable names, you’re not imagining things. The project has rebranded more than once, and compatibility is still part of the reality of running it.

OpenClaw’s founder recently joined OpenAI, and the ChatGPT creator has said it will help to maintain the open source tool as an independent foundation.

Why OpenClaw surged in popularity

OpenClaw didn’t pop because it had a slick landing page. It popped because it sits right in the overlap of three trends that developers actually care about.

People want agents, not chat tabs

The pitch is simple: you message it where you already work, and it responds with something useful. As an always-on assistant in your real channels, it’s been described as a step change by some observers, even as others warn about the risks of handing an agent too much power.

Self-hosting feels like a feature again

Between privacy concerns, tool sprawl, and not wanting yet another SaaS permissioning your company, self-hosting is having a moment. OpenClaw leans into that, and the community momentum has been obvious—including reports of extremely rapid repo growth and mainstream tech coverage.

The rebrand chaos amplified attention

The name changes weren’t planned as marketing, but the story traveled. Coverage around trademark pressure, renaming, and the project’s sudden visibility helped push it outside the usual open source bubble.

One more point worth acknowledging: popularity came with scrutiny.

OpenClaw-style assistants can touch real systems, and security researchers have already flagged serious issues in this space. If you’re going to run an agent gateway, you should treat it like a production system by isolating it, scoping access, and keeping it patched—especially with a new, relatively untested tool like OpenClaw.

The benefits of deploying OpenClaw on Dokploy

When a project is moving quickly, the hard part usually isn’t whether you can run something. It’s whether you can run it reliably without it turning into a second job.

Deploying OpenClaw on Dokploy gets you:

• A repeatable deployment path – The templates on the Dokploy Blueprints page give you a working default that’s designed to be customized, not reinvented. 
• A clean place to manage configuration – Environment variables, domains, and redeploys are handled in the same UI you already use for the rest of your services.
• A safer always-on setup – If you want OpenClaw running 24/7, putting it on infrastructure you manage, and can isolate. is usually safer than leaving it on a laptop with access to everything.

The template approach also keeps you flexible. The current Dokploy template deploys the gateway via Docker Compose with sensible defaults—ports, volumes, and baseline env vars. Find more about OpenClaw in our Docs.

How you can use OpenClaw to improve your work on Dokploy

Once OpenClaw is running, the obvious win is that you can put it where your work already happens, such as a Discord server for your project, a private channel for operations, or even a dedicated room for deployments.

Here are a few practical ways it fits into a Dokploy-centric workflow.

Use it as a deployment sidekick in Discord

You can connect the Discord channel, then use it for lightweight operational checks. For example, what’s running, what’s changed, what’s completed, and what you should look at next. OpenClaw can live inside Discord as a channel, and the Dokploy deployment flow makes it straightforward to keep the gateway online.

If you want a simple starting pattern, keep it narrow:

• One Discord server
• One channel
• One or two people who are allowed to interact
• Read-only behaviors first before you automate anything

Turn Dokploy into a tool that OpenClaw can query

Dokploy has an API with key-based auth, including AI-related endpoints (like fetching available models for a provider) and broader admin/project operations.

In practice, that means you can give OpenClaw a scoped API key and let it respond to prompts and questions like:

• “List my projects and services.”
• “What deployments ran today?”
• “Show me the last failure and the logs I should start with.”
• “Suggest a safer set of env vars for this service.”

You still decide how far you take it, but the building blocks are there.

Use it to tighten up your Compose and env hygiene

Once it’s deployed, you can ask OpenClaw to review:

• Your Compose overrides, such as ports, volumes, and resource constraints
• Your environment variables for missing required keys
• Your channel access rules and whether you’re being too permissive

That’s especially useful if you’re deploying fast and you want a second set of eyes before you invite the bot into a real team channel.

A simplified guide to deploy OpenClaw on Dokploy

You can read the full detailed guide to deploying OpenClaw on Dokpoy on GitHub. Here’s a simplified version to get you started.

Prerequisites

• A Dokploy instance: self-hosted or Dokploy Cloud
• An API key from your preferred model provider: OpenRouter is a common starting point
• A Discord bot token: if you want Discord connectivity

For Discord, make sure you enable MESSAGE CONTENT INTENT in the Discord Developer Portal, or the bot can crash on startup. The rest of the Discord steps are standard bot setup steps: create app, add bot, reset token, and invite it to your server.

Step 1. Create the service from the template

In your Dokploy project, click Create Service and choose Template.

This opens the template flow so you can deploy from a predefined Blueprint.

Step 2. Find the template

Search “OpenClaw” and click Create.

Step 3. Set your model provider API key

Open the service, go to Environment, and set your provider key.

The template includes an example using OPENROUTER_API_KEY, and the template documentation shows the same variable in its config.

Don’t forget to copy the username and password from the environments tab.

Save your changes.

Step 4. Deploy

Go back to General, then under Deploy Settings click Deploy.

Wait for the deployment to finish, then check Deployments and Logs to confirm the gateway started cleanly.

Step 5. Select the domain

Go to the Domains tab and click on the domain.

Step 5. Go to your dashboard

Now you can access the OpenClaw dashboard and start using the AI agent, but first, it’s a good idea to test it.

Step 5. Test it in Channels

At that point, you’re live. Now you can start turning it into something genuinely useful instead of just entertaining.

OpenClaw supports many different channels, so you can use OpenClaw as an AI agent in WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, etc.—whatever communication tool you prefer.

Your next steps with Dokploy and OpenClaw

OpenClaw is built to run where your team already works, and deploying it on Dokploy gives you an always-on, self-hosted gateway you can manage like any other service. Start simple with Discord, tighten access and configs as you go, and when you’re ready, you can take it further by wiring OpenClaw into Dokploy’s API to turn status checks and routine ops into fast, repeatable workflows.