OpenClaw Machines

Run as many isolated OpenClaw agents as you need, on hardware you own.

OpenClaw Machines is an open-source platform for running OpenClaw in secure AI sandboxes on your own infrastructure. A control plane orchestrates your hosts, and each agent runs in its own Firecracker microVM on them — hardware-isolated, safe for untrusted and agent-generated code. A Cloudflare data plane is the front door: every machine gets its own subdomain behind edge auth, reached through a tunnel that terminates inside the VM — no host port is exposed for user-to-VM traffic. The current control plane still needs private or firewall-restricted access to each agent's authenticated control API on 9090. See it running at openclawmachines.com.

The Apache-2.0 public core ships every piece of that stack:

• a minimal control plane — Go API, Postgres-backed accounts, machines, and hosts; placement, machine lifecycle, host enrollment, backups, and durable workflows;
• the host agent (ocm-agent) — boots, supervises, and reaps Firecracker microVMs on your enrolled Linux boxes, managing bridge/TAP networking and rootfs staging;
• a per-host LLM proxy (LiteLLM) — one place for model keys and BYO-key support, with per-machine usage tracking across providers (or your own locally served models);
• the OpenClaw runtime — the in-VM pieces: auth proxy, web-chat gateway, live terminal, and the artifact-driven runtime staging/upgrade flow;
• the browser runtime — paired Chromium browser VMs with CDP routing and a watchable live view;
• workspace integrations / native MCP — GitHub, Google Workspace, OpenAPI, GraphQL, and remote-MCP tools connected once per workspace and exposed to machines through the OCM MCP facade;
• and the that assemble it all — every component's build command, the GCS artifact bucket layout, host provisioning scripts, and the .

The ocm CLI lives in the separate mathaix/ocm-cli Apache-2.0 repository.

Video link

Click the screenshot to watch the 43-second demo on YouTube. This is a linked image, not an embedded player.

The demo covers host onboarding, agent spin-up, the running Firecracker VM terminal, workspace MCP integrations, and an agent tool call end to end.

Why OpenClaw Machines

• Security. Real isolation, not containers: one Firecracker microVM per agent, with its own guest kernel behind a KVM hardware boundary — and auth enforced at the edge and again inside every VM.
• Cost. One flat server cost: rent a single bare-metal box and run as many hardware-isolated agents as it fits — see how the options compare. The same architecture cuts token spend too: route agents to open-source models running on your own GPU hardware instead of paying per-token APIs.
• Sovereignty. Your hardware, your data, your keys. Run the control plane and workers on machines you own, and route model traffic through the per-host LLM proxy to any provider — or to models served on your own GPUs.
• Open source. Apache-2.0 public core and companion ocm CLI, permissively licensed for adoption, embedding, and contribution.
• Enterprise. Multi-user accounts and teams, admin-gated host management, encrypted per-machine secrets, and capacity/placement policies across your fleet.
• Ecosystem. Browser VMs for web automation, live terminal and web chat, per-VM routing, workspace-scoped native MCP integrations, backups/snapshots, agent memory, and observability with OpenTelemetry/Opik tracing and per-machine usage tracking.

How the options compare

If you run OpenClaw today, you have a few options:

1. Local hardware — run it on your own laptop or desktop.
2. A VPS (e.g. Hostinger, DigitalOcean) — rent a virtual server and run it there.
3. A managed service (e.g. KiloClaw) — spin up a hosted OpenClaw instance and pay per instance.

OpenClaw Machines is the fourth option: rent one bare-metal server (OVHcloud, Hetzner, …), point OpenClaw Machines at it, and spin up as many hardware-isolated OpenClaw instances as the box will hold. One agent or fifty — the cost stays one flat server.

In short: the managed route is easiest but priced per agent; local and VPS are cheap to start but don't isolate or scale well. OpenClaw Machines trades a little more setup for the best economics and isolation once you're running more than a couple of agents — one server, many hardware-isolated agents, all yours.

How it works

OpenClaw Machines turns your own Linux servers into a pool of secure, on-demand sandboxes. Each sandbox is a real Firecracker microVM (its own kernel, hardware-isolated via KVM) that runs one AI agent. The platform is the control plane that creates those VMs, keeps track of them, routes traffic to them, and tears them down — so you can run many untrusted agents safely on infrastructure you own. Think: a mini-cloud for AI agents, that you self-host.

1. Control plane (Go backend) — the brain. Accounts, machines, hosts, and config; the API the UI/CLI call; placement and lifecycle orchestration.
2. Hosts + worker agents — your Linux boxes. Enroll a host with an install script; its worker agent boots and stops Firecracker microVMs when told to.
3. Machines — one isolated microVM per agent. Inside: the OpenClaw agent, a web chat gateway, and a live terminal.
4. Browser VMs — separate microVMs running headful Chromium with a live view, driven by the agent over CDP for browser automation.
5. Routing / data plane — every running VM gets its own subdomain and a Cloudflare Tunnel that terminates inside the VM, with auth enforced at the edge and again in-VM.
6. Workspace integrations (native MCP) — connect external tools once per workspace (GitHub, Google Workspace, or any OpenAPI / GraphQL / remote-MCP endpoint); the control plane exposes them to each machine's agent through a single built-in MCP server, so the agent discovers and calls them with ocm.search_tools / ocm.call_tool instead of per-integration wiring.

flowchart TB
    U["you — browser / ocm CLI"] --> EDGE["Cloudflare edge<br/>Access auth · Worker route lookup (KV)"]
    EDGE -->|dashboard / API| CP["Control plane (Go)<br/>accounts · machines · hosts<br/>placement · lifecycle · backups"]
    CP --- DB[("Postgres")]
    CP -->|enroll · heartbeat · boot/stop :9090| H1["Host 1 — your Linux box<br/>ocm-agent · LLM proxy · CDP proxy"]
    CP -->|…| HN["Host N"]
    EDGE -->|per-VM tunnel, terminates inside the VM| VM1
    subgraph H1X["Host 1's microVMs"]
        VM1["Machine — Firecracker microVM<br/>OpenClaw agent · web chat · terminal<br/>authproxy + cloudflared inside"]
        BVM["Browser VM<br/>headful Chromium · live view"]
        VM1 -->|CDP| BVM
    end
    H1 --- H1X

The full design — data plane, routing, tunnels, lifecycle, config, and the build/release flow — is in docs/architecture.md, and the five-layer stack (React UI → Cloudflare edge → Go control plane → host agents → Firecracker sandboxes) is in docs/tech-stack.md.

Requirements

OpenClaw Machines runs Firecracker microVMs, which require KVM. You need a KVM-enabled Linux host: bare metal, or a cloud VM with nested virtualization enabled. It does not run on macOS, Windows/WSL, or a standard cloud VM without nested virtualization.

Check your host:

make preflight

Getting started

The Getting Started guide is three stages, each ending with something working:

Using a coding agent? Point it at docs/getting-started.md and ask it to follow the guide from Stage 1.

1. Local evaluation — the full stack + a real Firecracker machine on one KVM-capable Linux box. No Cloudflare or public domain is required; use an existing KVM host or the optional GCP provisioning example.
2. Cloudflare + a dedicated host — the production-shaped deployment: domain, tunnels, edge auth, and an enrolled cloud or bare-metal host.
3. The full workflow — create and use machines (chat, terminal, browser VMs), lifecycle, backups, runtime upgrades.

Project docs

• Getting Started — the three-stage guide above
• User guide — using a machine day-to-day (model, chat, terminal, browser VM, files, logs, traces, backups)
• Workspace integrations / native MCP — connect GitHub, Google Workspace, OpenAPI, GraphQL, and remote-MCP tools once per workspace
• Architecture — data plane, routing, tunnels, lifecycle, workspace integrations / native MCP
• Tech stack — the five layers, client to sandbox
• Local and BYO-host setup
• Control plane deployment profiles
• Self-hosted control plane prerequisites
• LLM operator runbook
• Public docs inventory
• Contributing · Security policy · Code of conduct
• ocm CLI project

Community & support

• GitHub Discussions — questions, ideas, show & tell
• Issues — bugs and feature requests
• Roadmap — the open-source readiness tracker: what's done, what's next
• Found a vulnerability? See the security policy.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md and the code of conduct.

License

Apache-2.0