I Ran AI Agents for a Month Without Monitoring — Here's What I Discovered

The Problem

You install OpenClaw, configure your AI agents, and let them run in the background. Days pass. Then you check your API bill and freeze.

What happened? How many tokens did you actually burn? Which agent was the culprit?

You have no idea. OpenClaw doesn't have a built-in dashboard. Your agents run invisibly, consuming tokens silently.

The Solution

I built OpenClaw Monitor — a free, self-hosted monitoring dashboard specifically for OpenClaw agents.

Here's what it tracks in real-time:

• Gateway status — is your OpenClaw Gateway actually running?
• Session count — how many active sessions right now?
• Token usage — prompt vs completion breakdown
• Message volume — messages per agent over time
• 7-day trends — see your patterns, catch anomalies early
• Heartbeat detection — instant alert when an agent goes dark

Tech Stack

• Frontend: Vue 3 + Element Plus + ECharts
• Backend: Express.js + SQLite
• Communication: Server-Sent Events / WebSocket (real-time, no polling)

Why I Built This

I was running OpenClaw agents on a $10/month VPS. After a particularly nasty month where I burned through my entire budget in 10 days, I realized I had zero visibility into what my agents were doing.

This dashboard was the obvious fix. Took a weekend to throw together. Turns out it's the most useful tool I have.

Try It Out

GitHub: https://github.com/flik2002/openclaw-monitor

The repo has installation instructions. It's designed to run alongside your existing OpenClaw setup — no code changes needed.

If you're running OpenClaw in production, I'd genuinely love to hear if this is useful to you. Star the repo if you want to see it develop further.

Self-hosted. No cloud dependency. Your data stays on your server.