Lobster borked Clawdbot

[exotic copper]

I installed lobster tool and now clawdbot won’t call any tools and keeps hanging up. It’s totally busted 🙁

[minor forum]

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[rugged trellis]

Sorry to hear you're having trouble! 🦐 Let me help you get unstuck.

Before diving in, a quick question: what version of Clawdbot are you running? (clawdbot --version)

Quick things to check:

1. Restart the gateway - Sometimes the lobster skill can cause issues if there's a config reload problem:

   clawdbot gateway restart
   

2. Check if it's the lobster skill - What exactly did you install? If you added the "lobster" tool/skill, try temporarily removing it from your config.

3. Look at the logs - Run clawdbot gateway logs - there should be a clear error message about what's hanging.

Common culprits:

• thinking: "high" or "medium" can cause hangs if you're on a slower model

• Circular tool calls between clawdbot and lobster
• Configuration syntax issues

If you can share your version and a snippet of the logs, I can give you more specific guidance! 🦐

[exotic copper]

2026.1.21-2

I restarted gateway multiple times

I don’t know how to remove it. I ran npm uninstall -g lobster if that’s it

[rugged trellis]

Ah, that makes sense! 🦐

The lobster tool is a skill, not an npm package. Running npm uninstall -g lobster won't remove it from Clawdbot's config.

To fix this, you need to remove it from your Clawdbot config:

1. Open your config file: ~/.clawdbot/clawdbot.json

2. Look for a skills section - you likely havelobster"` listed there

3. **Remove " it** - delete the "lobster"` line from the skills array

4. Restart the gateway:

   clawdbot gateway restart
   

Quick example of what to remove:

{
  "skills": [
    "lobster",  // ← remove this line
    "github",
    "weather"
  ]
}

Can you check your config and confirm if you see lobster listed there? If you're not sure what to look for, paste the skills section here and I'll help you fix it! 🦐

[exotic copper]

its literally lying to me about running skills and not actually running them and inventing information

[rugged trellis]

That's frustrating, and I totally understand why you're upset. 🦐

First - you need to actually remove lobster from your config. You mentioned running npm uninstall -g lobster but that doesn't touch Clawdbot's config file. The skill is still registered in ~/.clawdbot/clawdbot.json.

Steps to actually fix this:

1. Edit your config:

   nano ~/.clawdbot/clawdbot.json
   

2. Find the skills array and delete the "lobster" line

3. Save and restart:

   clawdbot gateway restart
   

If after removing lobster it still hangs or invents info, that's a deeper problem - but the lobster skill is almost certainly the culprit.

Before you edit, can you confirm:

• Does your config even have a skills section with lobster in it?
• Have you looked at the logs with clawdbot gateway logs to see what it's actually doing?

If you're not comfortable editing config directly, what's in your skills section right now? Paste it here and I'll tell you exactly what to delete. 🦐

[exotic copper]

problem is i’m ssh in there from my ipad so i can’t open it atm

[rugged trellis]

No worries! You can fix this with command-line tools. 🦐

Try this command to remove "lobster" from your skills:

jq 'del(.skills[] | select(. == "lobster"))' ~/.clawdbot/clawdbot.json > /tmp/clawdbot.json.tmp && mv /tmp/clawdbot.json.tmp ~/.clawdbot/clawdbot.json

Then restart:

clawdbot gateway restart

If that doesn't work, let's see what your skills section actually says:

grep -A5 '"skills"' ~/.clawdbot/clawdbot.json

Can you run both of those and tell me what happens? The first one should strip out the lobster skill from your config. 🦐

[errant niche]

This is also happening to me. I can properly remove/disable Lobster, but now it's eating my tokens again. I was hoping enabling Lobster would allow me to stay on the Max 5x Claude plan instead of having to go up to the $200/m plan