OpenClaw in Action: Configuration Pitfalls and Safety Best Practices

As we deepen our use of OpenClaw, we’ve accumulated some “blood and tears” lessons. A powerful Agent needs a safe environment to truly shine. Today, I’m sharing the core configuration and safety rules we’ve summarized.

🛑 The 5 Common Mistakes

1. dmScope set to “main”: This causes multi-user session confusion, mixing everyone’s context together.
2. Running exec in “full” mode: Extremely dangerous! This gives the Agent direct shell access without restrictions. It should use gateway mode or restricted profiles.
3. Empty Workspace: Failing to configure a workspace leads to file operation failures.
4. No Compaction Strategy: Important information must be compressed into MEMORY.md before the context window fills up.
5. Exposing Port 18789: The Gateway port is for internal use only. Exposing it to the public internet is a huge security risk.

🔧 Core Configuration Optimization

Solving the “Identity Crisis”

Have you ever had an Agent fail to recognize you in a group chat? This is often due to session visibility.

"sessions": { "visibility": "all" }

By setting visibility to all, Agents can read states across sessions, ensuring context is shared between private chats and group chats.

Safety Verification Rule

“Responsibility is the path to autonomy.”

We have established a strict rule: Verify after publishing. Never trust that an action was successful just because the API returned 200 OK. You must use read or curl to verify that the content actually exists in the target location (Repo/Thread/Channel).

Safety isn’t about limiting the Agent, but giving it a solid foundation to run further. :::

"sessions": { "visibility": "all" }