Health API

Monitor system health and configure heartbeat schedules.

Health check (web)

GET /api/health

No authentication required. Returns system health status.

The backend service exposes its own health check at GET /health (without the /api prefix). The web and backend health endpoints are independent — the web endpoint reports on the web application process while the backend endpoint reports on the API service. See backend health check below for details.

Breaking change: The health endpoint no longer returns cpu, memory, or uptime fields. These hardware details are now restricted to the admin-only endpoint at /api/admin/health. If you were consuming CPU, memory, or uptime data from this endpoint, update your integration to use the admin endpoint instead.

Response

{
  "status": "ok",
  "health": "healthy",
  "timestamp": "2026-03-19T00:00:00Z"
}

Field	Type	Description
`status`	string	`ok` when the health check completed successfully
`health`	string	Overall system health: `healthy`, `degraded`, or `unhealthy`
`timestamp`	string	ISO 8601 timestamp of the health check

The health field reflects overall system status based on internal CPU and memory thresholds:

Value	Condition
`healthy`	CPU and memory usage both at or below 70%
`degraded`	CPU or memory usage above 70% but at or below 85%
`unhealthy`	CPU or memory usage above 85%

Degraded and unhealthy responses

When the system is degraded or unhealthy, the endpoint still returns HTTP 200 with the health field set to degraded or unhealthy. The status field remains ok.

{
  "status": "ok",
  "health": "unhealthy",
  "timestamp": "2026-03-19T00:00:00Z"
}

Error response

An HTTP 500 is returned only when an unexpected error occurs while collecting health metrics, not for degraded or unhealthy status:

{
  "status": "error",
  "health": "unhealthy",
  "timestamp": "2026-03-19T00:00:00Z"
}

Code	Description
200	Health check succeeded. Check the `health` field for `healthy`, `degraded`, or `unhealthy`.
500	Unexpected error collecting health metrics.

Backend health check

GET /health

No authentication required. Returns backend service status including Render API availability. This endpoint is served by the backend API service (without the /api prefix).

The backend API continues to serve non-provisioning endpoints (health, metrics, auth, AI, registration) even when the Render API is not reachable. Agent provisioning and lifecycle operations are disabled until the Render API becomes available.

Response

{
  "status": "ok",
  "timestamp": "2026-03-19T00:00:00Z",
  "docker": "available",
  "provisioning": "enabled",
  "provider": "render"
}

Field	Type	Description
`status`	string	Always `ok` when the backend is running
`timestamp`	string	ISO 8601 timestamp of the health check
`docker`	string	Provisioning infrastructure availability. `available` when the Render API is reachable, `unavailable` otherwise. This field name is retained for backward compatibility.
`provisioning`	string	Agent provisioning capability. `enabled` when the Render API is reachable, `disabled` otherwise.
`provider`	string	Provisioning infrastructure provider. Returns `render`.

Response when the Render API is unavailable

When the Render API is not reachable, the health endpoint still returns HTTP 200 but reports degraded capabilities:

{
  "status": "ok",
  "timestamp": "2026-03-19T00:00:00Z",
  "docker": "unavailable",
  "provisioning": "disabled",
  "provider": "render"
}

When provisioning is disabled, any request to a provisioning-dependent endpoint (such as deploying, starting, stopping, or restarting an agent) returns a 500 error. Non-provisioning endpoints continue to operate normally.

Get heartbeat settings

GET /api/heartbeat?agentId=agent_123

Requires session authentication. Returns the heartbeat configuration for a specific agent. The endpoint first queries the OpenClaw gateway for a heartbeat cron job. If the gateway returns a matching job, the response uses the gateway data. If the gateway is unavailable or no heartbeat job exists, the endpoint falls back to the database.

The source field in the response indicates where the data came from: gateway when read from the gateway’s cron scheduler, or db when read from the database fallback.

Query parameters

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
`agentId`	string	No	The agent to retrieve heartbeat settings for. Required for the database fallback. When the gateway returns a heartbeat job, the `agentId` parameter is not used.

Response (gateway source)

When the gateway has a heartbeat cron job configured:

{
  "source": "gateway",
  "enabled": true,
  "frequency": "1h",
  "nextRun": "2026-03-30T02:00:00Z",
  "lastRun": "2026-03-30T01:00:00Z"
}

Field	Type	Description
`source`	string	Always `gateway` when data is from the gateway
`enabled`	boolean	Whether the heartbeat job is enabled
`frequency`	string	Heartbeat interval derived from the cron schedule (for example, `1h`, `30m`). When the schedule uses milliseconds, the value is converted to hours.
`nextRun`	string \| null	ISO 8601 timestamp of the next scheduled run
`lastRun`	string \| null	ISO 8601 timestamp of the last run

Response (database fallback)

When no gateway heartbeat job is found and agentId is provided:

{
  "source": "db",
  "enabled": true,
  "frequency": "30m",
  "message": "Using defaults — gateway heartbeat not configured"
}

When saved settings exist in the database, the response includes the stored enabled and frequency values. When no agentId is provided and no gateway heartbeat is found:

{
  "source": "db",
  "enabled": false,
  "message": "No agentId provided"
}

Errors

Code	Description
401	Unauthorized
500	Failed to fetch heartbeat settings

Update heartbeat settings

PUT /api/heartbeat

Requires session authentication. Updates heartbeat settings for a specific agent. The endpoint first attempts to write the heartbeat as a cron job on the OpenClaw gateway. If the gateway write succeeds, the response indicates source: "gateway". If the gateway is unavailable or the write fails, the settings are saved to the database as a fallback.

Breaking change: This endpoint now uses the PUT method instead of POST. The POST method is deprecated and may be removed in a future release. Update your integration to use PUT.

Request body

Field	Type	Required	Description
`agentId`	string	Conditional	The agent to update heartbeat settings for. Required when the gateway write fails and the database fallback is used.
`frequency`	string	No	Heartbeat interval. Supported values: `30m`, `1h`, `2h`, `3h`, `6h`, `12h`.
`enabled`	boolean	No	Enable or disable heartbeats. Defaults to `true`.

Response (gateway source)

{
  "success": true,
  "source": "gateway",
  "enabled": true,
  "frequency": "3h"
}

Response (database fallback)

{
  "success": true,
  "source": "db",
  "enabled": true,
  "frequency": "3h"
}

Field	Type	Description
`success`	boolean	`true` on success
`source`	string	Where the settings were saved: `gateway` or `db`
`enabled`	boolean	Whether heartbeats are enabled
`frequency`	string	Configured heartbeat interval

Errors

Code	Description
400	`agentId required` — the `agentId` field is missing and the gateway write failed (database fallback requires `agentId`)
401	Unauthorized
500	Heartbeat update failed

Delete heartbeat settings

Deprecated: The DELETE /api/heartbeat endpoint is deprecated. To disable heartbeats, use PUT /api/heartbeat with "enabled": false instead. When using the gateway, you can also remove the heartbeat cron job directly via DELETE /api/cron?jobId=heartbeat. See the cron API.

DELETE /api/heartbeat

Requires session authentication. Resets heartbeat configuration for a specific agent by removing saved settings from the database.

Request body

Field	Type	Required	Description
`agentId`	string	Yes	The agent to reset heartbeat settings for

Response

{
  "success": true
}

Errors

Code	Description
400	`agentId required` — the `agentId` field is missing from the request body
401	Unauthorized
500	Heartbeat reset failed

Container health checks

Agent services run the official OpenClaw image, which exposes built-in health endpoints on port 18789. The backend uses these to determine service readiness during provisioning and ongoing monitoring.

Built-in health endpoints

The OpenClaw image (ghcr.io/openclaw/openclaw:2026.3.28) provides two health endpoints on each agent service:

Endpoint	Purpose	Description
`GET /healthz`	Liveness	Returns `200` when the gateway process is running. Used by the health check to detect crashed or hung services.
`GET /readyz`	Readiness	Returns `200` when the gateway is ready to accept requests. Use this to verify the service has completed startup before routing traffic.

Both endpoints are unauthenticated and bind to the service’s internal port (18789).

`/healthz` response

{
  "ok": true,
  "status": "live"
}

Field	Type	Description
`ok`	boolean	`true` when the gateway process is running
`status`	string	Always `live` when the endpoint responds

`/readyz` response

{
  "ready": true,
  "failing": [],
  "uptimeMs": 68163
}

Field	Type	Description
`ready`	boolean	`true` when the gateway is ready to accept requests
`failing`	array	List of failing readiness checks. Empty when all checks pass.
`uptimeMs`	number	Gateway uptime in milliseconds since startup

The backend probes /healthz on the agent’s public Railway URL for health checks (with a 5-second timeout). The /healthz and /readyz endpoints are provided by the OpenClaw image itself and are available on all agent services.

Container health statuses

Status	Condition
`healthy`	Service is running and the internal health endpoint responds successfully
`starting`	Service is running but the health endpoint is not yet responding after all retries
`running`	Service is active on Railway and responding
`stopped`	Service has exited
`suspended`	Service has been suspended (saves resources, retains data). Railway does not natively support suspension, so this status indicates the service has been marked idle.
`not_found`	No matching Railway service exists for this agent
`error`	Service is in an unexpected state, build failed, or cannot be inspected

Health check behavior

The backend probes each agent’s /healthz endpoint to determine service health. The health check uses a 5-second timeout per request.
The waitForHealthy function polls service health every 2 seconds, with a default overall timeout of 60 seconds.

Watchdog monitoring

The backend runs a per-agent watchdog that continuously monitors agent health, detects crash loops, and performs automatic recovery. The watchdog operates internally and does not expose dedicated API endpoints. Status information is surfaced through the existing agent status and lifecycle endpoints.

Health check cycle

The watchdog probes each agent’s gateway at GET /healthz on the agent’s internal port. Health checks run on a configurable interval (default: every 2 minutes). When the gateway reports unhealthy, the watchdog transitions the agent to a degraded state and increases the check frequency to every 5 seconds.

Parameter	Default	Environment variable
Health check interval	120 seconds	`WATCHDOG_CHECK_INTERVAL`
Degraded check interval	5 seconds	`WATCHDOG_DEGRADED_CHECK_INTERVAL`
Startup failure threshold	3 consecutive failures	`WATCHDOG_STARTUP_FAILURE_THRESHOLD`
Max repair attempts	2	`WATCHDOG_MAX_REPAIR_ATTEMPTS`
Crash loop window	5 minutes	`WATCHDOG_CRASH_LOOP_WINDOW`
Crash loop threshold	3 crashes in window	`WATCHDOG_CRASH_LOOP_THRESHOLD`

Lifecycle states

The watchdog tracks the following lifecycle states for each agent:

State	Description
`stopped`	Agent is not running
`starting`	Agent service has started; waiting for the first successful health check
`running`	Agent is healthy and serving requests
`degraded`	Health checks are failing after a previous healthy state
`crash_loop`	Multiple crashes detected within the crash loop window
`repairing`	Auto-repair is in progress

Auto-repair

When the watchdog detects an unhealthy agent, it can automatically attempt recovery. Auto-repair is enabled by default and can be disabled by setting the WATCHDOG_AUTO_REPAIR environment variable to false. The repair sequence is:

Kill the agent gateway process
Wait 5 seconds
Restart the gateway
Wait 30 seconds (startup grace period)
Verify health

If the repair fails, the watchdog retries up to the configured maximum (default: 2 attempts). After exhausting all repair attempts, the agent transitions to the crash_loop state.

Crash loop detection

The watchdog tracks crash timestamps within a sliding window (default: 5 minutes). When the number of crashes in the window reaches the threshold (default: 3), the agent enters the crash_loop state. This prevents infinite restart loops for agents with persistent failures.

Notifications

The watchdog sends notifications for critical events (degraded, crash loop, repair attempts) through configured channels:

Telegram — when TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN and TELEGRAM_ADMIN_CHAT_ID are set
Discord — when DISCORD_WEBHOOK_URL is set

Railway status webhook

POST /api/webhooks/railway-status

Receives platform status notifications from Railway’s status page and deployment events from the Railway dashboard. This endpoint processes deployment events, incident updates, component status changes, and page-level notifications. Events are persisted to Redis so the dashboard can display real-time Railway status.

This endpoint accepts webhooks from both status.railway.com (incident and component updates) and the Railway dashboard (deployment events). Configure webhook subscriptions in both locations to point to this URL.

Authentication

When the RAILWAY_WEBHOOK_SECRET environment variable is configured, requests must include a valid secret via one of the following methods:

Method	Location	Description
Header	`x-railway-secret`	Shared secret in a custom request header
Query parameter	`?secret=`	Shared secret as a URL query parameter

The secret is verified using a constant-time comparison to prevent timing attacks. When RAILWAY_WEBHOOK_SECRET is not configured, requests are accepted without verification (development mode only).

You should always configure RAILWAY_WEBHOOK_SECRET in production to prevent unauthorized parties from injecting fake status notifications.

Request body

The endpoint accepts two payload formats: deployment events from the Railway dashboard and status-page events from Railway’s status page.

Deployment event

Sent by Railway when a deployment status changes.

Field	Type	Required	Description
`type`	string	No	Event type identifier
`deployment`	object	No	Deployment details
`deployment.id`	string	No	Deployment identifier
`deployment.status`	string	No	Current deployment status (for example, `SUCCESS`, `FAILED`, `BUILDING`, `DEPLOYING`)
`deployment.url`	string	No	Deployment URL
`deployment.service`	object	No	Service metadata
`deployment.service.name`	string	No	Name of the deployed service

Status-page event

Sent by Railway’s status page for incident and component updates. The payload follows the Railway status page webhook format.

Field	Type	Required	Description
`incident`	object	No	Incident details including `name`, `status`, and `incident_updates`
`incident.name`	string	No	Name of the incident
`incident.status`	string	No	Current incident status (for example, `investigating`, `identified`, `monitoring`, `resolved`)
`incident.incident_updates`	array	No	List of update objects. The first entry’s `body` field contains the latest update message.
`component`	object	No	Component status change details
`component.name`	string	No	Name of the affected component
`component.status`	string	No	Current component status (for example, `operational`, `degraded_performance`, `partial_outage`, `major_outage`)
`page`	object	No	Page-level status information

Response

On success, the endpoint returns the received event along with the persisted record:

{
  "received": true,
  "record": {
    "status": "SUCCESS",
    "name": "my-service",
    "message": "https://my-service.up.railway.app",
    "eventType": "deployment",
    "receivedAt": "2026-03-27T12:00:00.000Z"
  }
}

Field	Type	Description
`received`	boolean	Always `true` on success
`record`	object	The status record persisted to Redis
`record.status`	string	Normalized status value from the event
`record.name`	string	Service or incident name. Defaults to `"Railway"` for status-page events.
`record.message`	string	Deployment URL or latest incident update body
`record.eventType`	string	One of `deployment`, `incident`, `component`, or the `type` field from the payload
`record.receivedAt`	string	ISO 8601 timestamp when the event was received

The record is stored in Redis under the key railway:status:latest with a 7-day TTL. When Redis is not configured (KV_REST_API_URL and KV_REST_API_TOKEN not set), the endpoint still processes the event and returns the record but does not persist it.

Error response

Returned when the request body is not valid JSON:

{
  "error": "Invalid payload"
}

Code	Description
200	Webhook payload received and processed
400	Invalid JSON payload
401	Unauthorized — missing or invalid secret when `RAILWAY_WEBHOOK_SECRET` is configured

Example payloads

Deployment event

{
  "type": "deployment.completed",
  "deployment": {
    "id": "dep_abc123",
    "status": "SUCCESS",
    "url": "https://my-service.up.railway.app",
    "service": {
      "name": "my-service"
    }
  }
}

Incident event

{
  "incident": {
    "name": "Elevated error rates on US-West deployments",
    "status": "investigating",
    "incident_updates": [
      {
        "body": "We are investigating elevated error rates affecting deployments in the US-West region."
      }
    ]
  }
}

Railway status polling

GET /api/webhooks/railway-status

Returns the last-known Railway status from Redis. No authentication required. Use this endpoint to display Railway platform status on your dashboard.

Response

When a status event has been received and persisted:

{
  "status": "SUCCESS",
  "lastEvent": {
    "status": "SUCCESS",
    "name": "my-service",
    "message": "https://my-service.up.railway.app",
    "eventType": "deployment",
    "receivedAt": "2026-03-27T12:00:00.000Z"
  },
  "endpoint": "railway-status-webhook"
}

Field	Type	Description
`status`	string	Status from the most recent event, or `no-events` if no events have been received
`lastEvent`	object \| null	The full status record from the last webhook event, or `null` if no events exist
`endpoint`	string	Always `railway-status-webhook`

When no events have been received:

{
  "status": "no-events",
  "lastEvent": null,
  "endpoint": "railway-status-webhook"
}

When Redis is not configured (KV_REST_API_URL and KV_REST_API_TOKEN not set):

{
  "status": "unknown",
  "message": "Redis not configured",
  "endpoint": "railway-status-webhook"
}

Code	Description
200	Status retrieved (or fallback returned when Redis is unavailable)

Getting Started

Core Concepts

Integrations

Core Services

Payments

API Reference

MCP

Security

​Health API

​Health check (web)

​Response

​Degraded and unhealthy responses

​Error response

​Backend health check

​Response

​Response when the Render API is unavailable

​Get heartbeat settings

​Query parameters

​Response (gateway source)

​Response (database fallback)

​Errors

​Update heartbeat settings

​Request body

​Response (gateway source)

​Response (database fallback)

​Errors

​Delete heartbeat settings

​Request body

​Response

​Errors

​Container health checks

​Built-in health endpoints

​/healthz response

​/readyz response

​Container health statuses

​Health check behavior

​Watchdog monitoring

​Health check cycle

​Lifecycle states

​Auto-repair

​Crash loop detection

​Notifications

​Railway status webhook

​Authentication

​Request body

​Deployment event

​Status-page event

​Response

​Error response

​Example payloads

​Deployment event

​Incident event

​Railway status polling

​Response

Health API

Health check (web)

Response

Degraded and unhealthy responses

Error response

Backend health check

Response

Response when the Render API is unavailable

Get heartbeat settings

Query parameters

Response (gateway source)

Response (database fallback)

Errors

Update heartbeat settings

Request body

Response (gateway source)

Response (database fallback)

Errors

Delete heartbeat settings

Request body

Response

Errors

Container health checks

Built-in health endpoints

`/healthz` response

`/readyz` response

Container health statuses

Health check behavior

Watchdog monitoring

Health check cycle

Lifecycle states

Auto-repair

Crash loop detection

Notifications

Railway status webhook

Authentication

Request body

Deployment event

Status-page event

Response

Error response

Example payloads

Deployment event

Incident event

Railway status polling

Response