clincher

Architecture

Deployment topology, services, and network isolation for clincher.

Deployment Topology

graph TB
    CF["☁️ Cloudflare<br/>WAF + CDN"]
    PROXY["🔒 Caddy / Nginx<br/>reverse proxy"]

    subgraph INTERNAL ["🔐 openclaw-net · internal · no direct internet"]
        GW["🤖 openclaw<br/>gateway + agent runtime"]
        DP["🐳 docker-proxy<br/>socket proxy"]
        LLM["💬 litellm<br/>LLM routing + cost controls"]
        REDIS["🗄️ redis<br/>RediSearch semantic cache"]
        EGRESS["🚪 openclaw-egress<br/>Smokescreen egress whitelist"]
    end

    subgraph MONVPS ["📊 monitoring · separate VPS"]
        PROM["📈 prometheus<br/>metrics · 30d retention"]
        GRAF["📉 grafana<br/>dashboards + alerts"]
        UKUMA["🟢 uptime-kuma<br/>external health checks"]
    end

    SOCK["🔌 /var/run/docker.sock<br/>read-only"]
    LLMAPI["☁️ LLM APIs<br/>.anthropic.com · .openai.com"]

    CF -->|HTTPS| PROXY
    PROXY -->|proxy-net| GW
    GW --> DP
    GW --> LLM
    GW --> REDIS
    LLM --> EGRESS
    DP --> SOCK
    EGRESS -->|egress-net| LLMAPI
    PROM -.->|"HTTPS scrape<br/>(cross-VPS)"| LLM
    UKUMA -.->|"HTTPS health<br/>(cross-VPS)"| CF
    GRAF -.-> PROM

    classDef external fill:#f9f0ff,stroke:#9b59b6,stroke-width:2px,color:#333
    classDef proxy fill:#e8f8f5,stroke:#1abc9c,stroke-width:2px,color:#333
    classDef core fill:#ebf5fb,stroke:#3498db,stroke-width:2px,color:#333
    classDef monitor fill:#fef9e7,stroke:#f39c12,stroke-width:2px,color:#333
    classDef infra fill:#fdedec,stroke:#e74c3c,stroke-width:2px,color:#333

    class CF,LLMAPI external
    class PROXY proxy
    class GW,DP,LLM,REDIS,EGRESS core
    class PROM,GRAF,UKUMA monitor
    class SOCK infra

Three bridge networks enforce least-privilege communication. openclaw-net is internal — no internet access. The egress proxy bridges internal and external via egress-net. The reverse proxy reaches the gateway via proxy-net. Dashed lines indicate monitoring connections that cross VPS boundaries. Traffic between co-located services never leaves the host, so no IPSEC encryption is needed.

Services

Service	Image	Purpose	Network
`docker-proxy`	`ghcr.io/tecnativa/docker-socket-proxy:v0.4.2`	Sandboxed Docker API (EXEC only)	`openclaw-net`
`openclaw`	`ghcr.io/openclaw/openclaw:2026.3.13`	Main gateway — agent runtime, tool execution	`openclaw-net` + `proxy-net`
`litellm`	`ghcr.io/berriai/litellm:main-v1.81.3-stable`	LLM API proxy — routing, cost controls, caching	`openclaw-net`
`openclaw-egress`	Built from stripe/smokescreen	Egress whitelist proxy for LLM API calls	`openclaw-net` + `egress-net`
`redis`	`redis/redis-stack-server:7.4.0-v3`	Semantic cache (RediSearch module)	`openclaw-net`

Networks

openclaw-net: Internal bridge — no internet access. Core services live here. internal: true prevents any direct internet connectivity.
egress-net: Bridges the egress proxy to the internet for whitelisted LLM API calls only. Only Smokescreen and external LLM endpoints communicate here.
proxy-net: Connects the reverse proxy (Caddy/Nginx) to the OpenClaw gateway. The only path for inbound HTTPS to reach the application.

Monitoring

Monitoring services (Prometheus, Grafana, Uptime Kuma) run on a separate VPS and are deployed via ansible-playbook caprover-playbook.yml. They scrape the OpenClaw host remotely over HTTPS, keeping monitoring isolated from the production workload. A compromise of the monitoring stack does not grant access to the application network.

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