Understanding OpenClaw’s Gateway, Agent Runtime, and Multi-Agent Architecture
OpenClaw is an open-source AI agent platform. You can create multiple agents, connect to multiple messaging systems, and connect different tools, MCPs, etc. It comes with a lot of built-in plugins and tools that let agents do the work.
OpenClaw has multiple components:
- Web UI. This is the user chat interface layer. A person reads and sends messages here. OpenClaw supports many messaging clients such as Slack and Telegram. Each of these clients connects to the same Gateway the same way the Web UI does.
- Gateway. This is the control plane. It connects many clients — apps, nodes, and messaging services. It owns every client connection and every messaging surface. Every client/app talks to the Gateway server via WebSocket communication protocol. Openclaw has defined a strongly typed messaging protocol on top of WebSockets which allows seamless communication.
- Agent Runtime.This component calls AI model endpoints. It also calls tools, manages...
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