openclaw for Hetzner cloud

(work in progress)

Configuration

Required Terraform variables: HCLOUD_TOKEN, OPENAI_API_KEY

Set those in infra/terraform.tfvars or use TF_VAR_ prefixed environment variables.

Add Include {project_path}/ssh_config to ~/.ssh/config. This could be automated, but I didn't want to programmatically touch my ssh config.

Deployment

Remember to select correct context

hcloud context create openclaw # if not created yet – it will ask for an API key
hcloud context openclaw

cd infra
terraform apply -auto-approve

Setup Docker

cd ../app
docker context create openclaw --docker="host=ssh://openclaw"
docker context use openclaw
docker compose up -d

Remember to change the context back to default if needed.

Access Web UI

1. Open SSH tunnel

ssh -N -L 18789:127.0.0.1:18789 openclaw

2. Open http://127.0.0.1:18789

3. Connect

Paste OPENCLAW_GATEWAY_TOKEN from app/.env to WebUI & press Connect

4. Done

All set, you can Chat now.

Known issues

• Browser not working, it's failing with

  [tools] browser failed: Can't reach the OpenClaw browser control service (timed out after 15000ms). Start (or restart) the OpenClaw gateway (OpenClaw.app menubar, or `openclaw gateway`) and try again.