ClawShield

Security proxy for AI agents. Sits in front of OpenClaw and scans every message for prompt injection, PII leaks, and secrets — before they reach the model or leave the network.

Ships with 5 specialized AI agents, a built-in dashboard, and a YAML policy engine. One command to start.

┌──────────────┐     ┌──────────────────┐     ┌──────────────┐
│   Browser    │────▶│  ClawShield      │────▶│   OpenClaw   │
│   (you)      │◀────│  Security Proxy  │◀────│   Gateway    │
└──────────────┘     └──────────────────┘     └──────────────┘
                      ▪ Prompt injection       ▪ Claude, GPT,
                        detection                LM Studio
                      ▪ PII/secrets redaction  ▪ Multi-agent
                      ▪ Policy enforcement       routing
                      ▪ Audit logging          ▪ RAG knowledge

Quickstart (Docker)

Prerequisites: Docker and an Anthropic API key.

# 1. Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/SleuthCo/clawshield-public.git
cd clawshield-public

# 2. Set your API key
cp standalone/.env.template standalone/.env
# Edit standalone/.env and paste your Anthropic API key

# 3. Start
cd standalone
docker compose up -d

Open http://localhost:18801 in your browser. You'll see the ClawShield dashboard with 5 AI agents ready to chat.

That's it. ClawShield is scanning all traffic between you and the agents.

Getting an Anthropic API Key

ClawShield uses Claude (via Anthropic's API) as the default language model. Here's how to get your key:

1. Go to console.anthropic.com and sign up (or log in)
2. Click API Keys in the left sidebar
3. Click Create Key
4. Give it a name (e.g., "clawshield") and click Create
5. Copy the key — it starts with sk-ant-
6. Paste it into your standalone/.env file:
   root@kitploit:~

   ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-your-key-here
   

Cost: Anthropic charges per token. A typical chat session costs a few cents. New accounts get $5 in free credits. See anthropic.com/pricing for details.

Using a different model? ClawShield works with any OpenAI-compatible API (GPT, LM Studio, Ollama, etc.). Edit standalone/config/openclaw.json to point at your preferred provider.

Installation Options

Option 1: Docker (recommended)

Everything runs in a single container — ClawShield proxy + OpenClaw gateway + 5 agents.

See Quickstart above.

Option 2: Pre-built Binaries

Download the latest release from GitHub Releases:

Then run the interactive setup wizard:

# Download the setup wizard too
chmod +x clawshield-setup-*

# Run the wizard — it walks you through everything
./clawshield-setup-linux-amd64

The wizard will:

• Ask for your Anthropic API key
• Configure your agents
• Generate the OpenClaw config
• Create start/stop scripts

Option 3: Build from Source

Requires Go 1.24+.

git clone https://github.com/SleuthCo/clawshield-public.git
cd clawshield-public

# Build the proxy
cd proxy/cmd/clawshield-proxy
go build -o clawshield-proxy

# Build the setup wizard
cd ../../clawshield-setup
go build -o clawshield-setup

# Run setup
./clawshield-setup

What's Included

Observability

ClawShield exposes a Prometheus-compatible /metrics endpoint for real-time monitoring:

curl http://localhost:18789/metrics

Key metrics:

• clawshield_requests_total — Total requests evaluated
• clawshield_decisions_allowed_total / _denied_total / _redacted_total — Decision outcomes
• clawshield_scanner_detections_total{scanner,action} — Detections by scanner type
• clawshield_evaluation_duration_seconds — Evaluation latency histogram
• clawshield_active_connections — Current WebSocket connections
• clawshield_crosslayer_events_* — Cross-layer event bus activity

Security Proxy

The core of ClawShield. An HTTP reverse proxy that intercepts all traffic between users and the AI gateway.

Scanners (each produces structured forensic audit records with rule IDs and redacted match excerpts):

• Prompt injection detection — blocks jailbreak attempts, instruction override, role manipulation
• PII redaction — detects and redacts emails, phone numbers, SSNs, credit cards
• Secrets detection — catches API keys, tokens, passwords before they leak
• Vulnerability scanning — flags SQL injection, SSRF, path traversal, command injection, XSS
• Malware analysis — detects executables, scripts, archive bombs, known signatures

Production Hardening (Layer 3):

• Go-native eBPF monitor replacing Python/BCC dependency — single compiled binary
• Graceful degradation: automatic fallback to /proc polling when eBPF is unavailable (no CAP_BPF, old kernel, containers)
• Health check system: per-layer status reporting (healthy/degraded/down) for all 3 defense layers
• Event pipeline reliability: loss counting, backpressure logging, published/dropped event metrics
• Dynamic DNS re-resolution for firewall rules — prevents stale rules when CDN IPs rotate
• Capability detection at startup: kernel version, BTF support, root/CAP_BPF check

Policy Hot-Reload:

• File-watch based hot-reload — modify policy.yaml and changes take effect within 5 seconds, no restart needed
• Content-hash versioning — every policy version gets a SHA256-based version ID, recorded in audit logs
• Shadow/canary mode — test new policies in log-only mode before enforcing
• Policy diff — every reload logs exactly what changed (allowlist additions, scanner toggles, etc.)
• Atomic swap — in-flight requests continue with old policy, new requests use new policy

Streaming Response Scanning:

• Real-time chunk-by-chunk scanning of SSE and NDJSON streams — no buffering delay
• Sliding overlap window (200 chars) catches patterns spanning chunk boundaries
• Context-carrying from request to response reduces false positives (e.g., code generation responses can contain script patterns)
• Per-chunk redaction of secrets and PII in streaming output

Policy engine — YAML-based, deny-by-default:

default_action: deny

scanners:
  prompt_injection:
    enabled: true
    action: block
  pii:
    enabled: true
    action: redact
  secrets:
    enabled: true
    action: block

domain_allowlist:
  - "api.anthropic.com"
  - "api.openai.com"

See policy/examples/ for more examples.

5 AI Agents

Each agent has a specialized role and its own RAG knowledge base:

Audit Logging

Every request and response is logged to a local SQLite database with:

• Timestamp, source IP, request method
• Scanner decisions (allow/block/redact) with reasons
• Decision explainability — structured forensic detail for every deny/redact decision, including which scanner fired, which rule matched, a safely redacted excerpt of the match, and confidence level
• Full request/response payloads (configurable)
• Query via the built-in audit CLI:

clawshield-audit --db /var/lib/clawshield/audit.db --last 50
clawshield-audit --db /var/lib/clawshield/audit.db --blocked-only
clawshield-audit --db /var/lib/clawshield/audit.db --scanner injection
clawshield-audit --db /var/lib/clawshield/audit.db --rule-id sqli

See docs/audit-log-format.md for the full schema and Decision Explainability for forensic query details.

SIEM Integration:

• Real-time forwarding of Critical and High severity events to enterprise SIEM systems
• OCSF v1.1 Detection Finding format for universal SIEM compatibility
• Syslog (RFC 5424 over TCP/TLS) and webhook (HTTPS POST) transports
• Configurable severity threshold — default forwards only High (4) and Critical (5) alerts
• See docs/audit-log-format.md for configuration

Network Firewall (optional)

iptables-based egress firewall that restricts which domains/IPs agents can reach:

cd firewall/cmd/clawshield-fw && go build -o clawshield-fw
sudo ./clawshield-fw apply --config firewall/examples/firewall.yaml

eBPF Monitor (optional)

Kernel-level syscall monitoring for detecting suspicious agent behavior:

sudo python3 ebpf/cmd/clawshield-ebpf/main.py --config ebpf/config/default.yaml

Detects: fork bombs, sensitive file access, privilege escalation, anomalous network connections.

Architecture

ClawShield uses defense-in-depth — three security layers connected by a cross-layer event bus:

Layer 1: Application (ClawShield Proxy)
  ▪ Scans message content
  ▪ Enforces YAML policies
  ▪ Logs all decisions

Layer 2: Network (ClawShield Firewall)
  ▪ iptables egress rules
  ▪ Domain/IP allowlist
  ▪ Blocks unapproved connections
  ▪ Dynamic temporary rules from cross-layer events

Layer 3: Kernel (ClawShield eBPF)
  ▪ Syscall monitoring
  ▪ Behavioral anomaly detection
  ▪ Real-time alerts

Each layer works independently. If one is bypassed, the others still protect.

Cross-Layer Event Bus

The three layers communicate via a Unix socket-based event bus, enabling adaptive security responses across layers:

┌──────────────┐                          ┌──────────────┐
│  eBPF        │──── Unix Socket ────────▶│  Proxy       │
│  (Layer 3)   │  /tmp/clawshield-       │  (Layer 1)   │
│  Produces:   │   events.sock           │  Produces:   │
│  • privesc   │                          │  • injection │
│  • port_scan │◀── Adaptive Controller ──│  • malware   │
│  • file_access│                         │  • vuln_scan │
└──────────────┘                          └──────────────┘
                         │
                         ▼
                ┌──────────────┐
                │  Firewall    │
                │  (Layer 2)   │
                │  Consumes:   │
                │  • temp block│
                │    rules     │
                └──────────────┘

Example adaptive reactions:

Enable cross-layer integration by adding an adaptive section to your policy YAML. See policy/examples/adaptive_crosslayer.yaml for a complete example.

Production Deployment

For deploying on a real server with TLS, see docs/install-guide.md.

The deploy/ directory contains:

• cloud-init.yaml — Hardened VM provisioning (SSH lockdown, fail2ban, nftables, auditd)
• docker-compose.yml — Full production stack with nginx TLS termination
• nginx/conf.d/ — Production nginx configs with rate limiting, security headers, WebSocket proxy
• deploy.sh — Automated deployment script
• smoke-test.sh — Post-deployment verification

Configuration

Environment Variables

Files

Testing

# Unit tests
go test ./proxy/...
go test ./firewall/...

# Integration tests
go test ./integration/...

Contributing

Issues and pull requests welcome at github.com/SleuthCo/clawshield-public.

License

Apache 2.0

Acknowledgments

Built on OpenClaw. Inspired by traditional network security architectures applied to AI agent contexts.