Openclaw permission loop

[cloud skiff]

To help others find answers, you can mark your question as solved via Right click solution message -> Apps -> ✅ Mark Solution

[clear coral]

What you’re running into is Exec Approvals (host execution guardrails), not “normal bot commands”.

Two separate things are happening:

1. Why it asks for approval for literally everything (even ls)

• When exec runs on a real host (host=gateway or host=node), OpenClaw enforces policy from ~/.openclaw/exec-approvals.json on that machine.
• If your approvals are set to security=allowlist and you have an empty allowlist (or ask=always), you’ll get prompted constantly.
• Also: the effective behavior is the stricter of:
  • tools.exec.* in your main config, and
  • the approvals defaults in exec-approvals.json

Quick checks (paste outputs here):

openclaw --version
openclaw config get tools.exec
openclaw approvals get --gateway

To stop the constant prompts, you typically do one of these:

• Add allowlist entries for the stuff you want:

  openclaw approvals allowlist add --gateway --agent main "/usr/bin/ls"
  # and add whatever binary/script you actually want to run
  

• Set approvals to prompt only on misses (instead of always): ask: "on-miss"
• (Not recommended) set security: "full" if you truly want “run anything without asking”.

Docs: https://docs.openclaw.ai/tools/exec-approvals and https://docs.openclaw.ai/cli/approvals

2. Why “yes” in Discord loops and never approves
   Discord exec approvals are button-based and sent via DM, not by typing “yes” in the channel.

Make sure this is enabled + your user is an approver:

{
  channels: {
    discord: {
      execApprovals: {
        enabled: true,
        approvers: ["<your_discord_user_id>"]
      }
    }
  }
}

Then restart the gateway and check your DMs with the bot for the approval buttons.

Docs: https://docs.openclaw.ai/channels/discord#exec-approvals-in-discord