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Run OpenClaw on a Prized box

Keep the OpenClaw Gateway running around the clock on a Prized box, so your assistant answers on WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord or Slack with your laptop closed, and open its Control UI on your localhost.

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OpenClaw connects your assistant to WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, Slack and more through one Gateway, so it needs a computer that stays on. A Prized box is one. Use a Micro (2 vCPU, 4 GB) or larger: the Gateway alone takes 1 to 2 GB of memory.

1. Start a box

Sign up at prized.dev and follow the tour, picking Micro when it asks for a size: it starts the box on $30 of free credit with no card, and the command it shows installs the CLI and adds the box to your SSH config (Quickstart). Replace mango with your box's name. If your box is a Nano, resize it; it restarts with its files (Resize):

prized box resize mango micro

2. Keep it awake

On the free credit, auto-pause is on, and a Gateway waiting for messages looks idle, so the box would pause and stop answering (Auto-pause). Switch it off for this box:

prized box auto-pause mango off

A Micro awake around the clock uses about $25 of credit a month (Billing).

3. Install OpenClaw

prized ssh mango

Then, on the box:

you@mango
curl -fsSL https://openclaw.ai/install.sh | bash

It installs Node.js and OpenClaw in about 2 minutes, then opens onboarding to pick your model (OpenClaw's getting started). Quick start leaves the Gateway running in that terminal: press Ctrl+C, open a new shell so openclaw is on your PATH, and install the Gateway as a service, which starts again whenever the box boots:

you@mango
openclaw gateway install

If it refuses with unsafe-permissions, run chmod go-w on the directory it names, then install again. Check that it is running:

you@mango
openclaw gateway status

4. Open the Control UI

The Gateway listens only on the box's own localhost, port 18789. Forward it from a terminal on your machine, then open http://localhost:18789:

ssh -N -L 18789:127.0.0.1:18789 mango

To sign in, run openclaw gateway auth-token --show in your prized ssh session and paste the token into Gateway secret (Control UI). Connect WhatsApp, Telegram and the rest from there or with openclaw channels add (Channels).

When the box sleeps

A Micro keeps its memory through a pause, so the same Gateway process comes back when the box wakes, about 15 seconds after prized ssh mango or prized box resume mango --wait (Pause and resume). Give it a minute or two before the first reply; while the box sleeps, the assistant can't answer.