GoClaw is a multi-tenant AI agent gateway in Go: LLM providers, messaging channels (Telegram, Discord, Slack, Zalo, Feishu, WhatsApp), agent teams, and a knowledge vault, behind one binary with a built-in web dashboard.

Two containers: goclaw, and postgres — pgvector, which holds tenants, sessions, encrypted provider keys and the semantic memory.

Setup

Generate the two secrets:

openssl rand -hex 16   # GOCLAW_GATEWAY_TOKEN
openssl rand -hex 32   # GOCLAW_ENCRYPTION_KEY

Map the domain to port 18790 and deploy. Migrations run on start.
Open the domain and use the setup wizard to add an LLM provider key.

Health check: GET /health, which the goclaw container also polls as its compose healthcheck so Coolify can report it healthy. The first check waits 60 seconds, to leave time for migrations on start.

Authentication

GOCLAW_GATEWAY_TOKEN is the bearer token for the API and the dashboard, and the only thing between the domain and a gateway whose agents run tools. It fails fast if unset rather than defaulting to blank: upstream's own compose allows an empty token for loopback-only development, which behind a public domain would publish the gateway.

GOCLAW_ENCRYPTION_KEY encrypts the provider API keys at rest in PostgreSQL (AES-256-GCM). It is required for the same reason, and it must not change once keys are stored — every one of them becomes unreadable.

Both are the two values upstream's prepare-env.sh generates; the script itself is not used here.

Environment

Variable	Default	Purpose
`GOCLAW_GATEWAY_TOKEN`	—	Bearer token for the API and dashboard
`GOCLAW_ENCRYPTION_KEY`	—	AES-256-GCM key for stored provider keys
`POSTGRES_USER` / `POSTGRES_PASSWORD` / `POSTGRES_DB`	`goclaw`	Database credentials, read by both containers
`GOCLAW_AUTO_UPGRADE`	`true`	Apply schema migrations and data hooks on startup
`GOCLAW_MINIMAX_API_KEY`	empty	MiniMax LLM provider key
`GOCLAW_TTS_MINIMAX_API_KEY` / `GOCLAW_TTS_MINIMAX_GROUP_ID`	empty	MiniMax text-to-speech credentials
`GOCLAW_TRACE_VERBOSE`	`0`	Log full LLM request and response bodies

GOCLAW_AUTO_UPGRADE defaults to true, the value upstream recommends for Docker. The image entrypoint already runs goclaw upgrade before serve, but it only logs a warning when that fails. With the variable set, serve applies any pending migrations itself rather than stopping on a schema check.

The MiniMax variables are the one case where a provider key comes from the environment rather than the dashboard: GoClaw reads them directly for the MiniMax provider and its text-to-speech. Leave them empty when MiniMax is not used.

GOCLAW_HOST, GOCLAW_PORT, GOCLAW_CONFIG and GOCLAW_SKILLS_DIR are set in compose.yml rather than here — they are properties of this layout, not of whoever deploys it. The two paths override image defaults that point outside any volume (/app/config.json, /app/skills), which would drop the configuration and every installed skill on redeploy.

Other provider API keys are not variables: they are entered in the dashboard and stored encrypted in PostgreSQL.

Storage

Volume	Mount	Holds
`goclaw-data`	`/app/data`	`config.json`, skills, Claude CLI credentials, runtime packages
`goclaw-workspace`	`/app/workspace`	Files the agents work on
`postgres-data`	`/var/lib/postgresql`	The database

Upstream's PostgreSQL overlay adds a third goclaw-skills volume at /app/skills; it is not here, because GOCLAW_SKILLS_DIR points at /app/data/skills and the volume would mount empty over a path nothing reads. Skills persist in goclaw-data instead.

postgres-data mounts /var/lib/postgresql, not /var/lib/postgresql/data. PostgreSQL 18 images moved PGDATA down a level into a version directory, so the parent is now the mount point.

The image's own user owns /app — goclaw, uid 1000, created with /app as its home. /app/.claude is a symlink into /app/data, which is how CLI credentials survive a recreate.

Networking

Listens on 18790.

extra_hosts maps host.docker.internal to the host gateway, so an agent can reach a service running on the host itself.

Image

ghcr.io/nextlevelbuilder/goclaw:full, the variant with every runtime and skill dependency pre-installed — Python, Node, pandoc, poppler, the GitHub CLI. The plain tag ships Python only and installs the rest on demand into /app/data/.runtime, which means the first use of a skill waits on a package install and a wiped data volume repeats it. Paying for the size once is the better trade here.

The tag is moving, tracking the newest full build. The variant tags are only published as full and <major>.<minor>-full — there is no <major>-full — so full is the moving tag to follow.

Hardening

cap_drop: ALL with SETUID/SETGID/CHOWN added back, no-new-privileges, a noexec tmpfs on /tmp, and memory, CPU and pid limits — all as upstream ships them. The three capabilities are what the entrypoint needs to install persisted packages as root and then drop to the goclaw user via su-exec.

This is a service whose whole purpose is running model-chosen tools, so the limits are worth keeping.