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Pairing

“Pairing” is OpenClaw’s explicit owner approval step. It is used in two places:

  1. DM pairing (who is allowed to talk to the bot)
  2. Node pairing (which devices/nodes are allowed to join the gateway network)

Security context: Security

1) DM pairing (inbound chat access)

When a channel is configured with DM policy pairing, unknown senders get a short code and their message is not processed until you approve.

Default DM policies are documented in: Security

Pairing codes:

  • 8 characters, uppercase, no ambiguous chars (0O1I).
  • Expire after 1 hour. The bot only sends the pairing message when a new request is created (roughly once per hour per sender).
  • Pending DM pairing requests are capped at 3 per channel by default; additional requests are ignored until one expires or is approved.

Approve a sender

openclaw pairing list telegram
openclaw pairing approve telegram <CODE>

Supported channels: telegram, whatsapp, signal, imessage, discord, slack, feishu.

Where the state lives

Stored under ~/.openclaw/credentials/:

  • Pending requests: <channel>-pairing.json
  • Approved allowlist store: <channel>-allowFrom.json

Treat these as sensitive (they gate access to your assistant).

2) Node device pairing (iOS/Android/macOS/headless nodes)

Nodes connect to the Gateway as devices with role: node. The Gateway creates a device pairing request that must be approved.

If you use the device-pair plugin, you can do first-time device pairing entirely from Telegram:

  1. In Telegram, message your bot: /pair
  2. The bot replies with two messages: an instruction message and a separate setup code message (easy to copy/paste in Telegram).
  3. On your phone, open the OpenClaw iOS app → Settings → Gateway.
  4. Paste the setup code and connect.
  5. Back in Telegram: /pair approve

The setup code is a base64-encoded JSON payload that contains:

  • url: the Gateway WebSocket URL (ws://... or wss://...)
  • token: a short-lived pairing token

Treat the setup code like a password while it is valid.

Approve a node device

openclaw devices list
openclaw devices approve <requestId>
openclaw devices reject <requestId>

Node pairing state storage

Stored under ~/.openclaw/devices/:

  • pending.json (short-lived; pending requests expire)
  • paired.json (paired devices + tokens)

Notes

  • The legacy node.pair.* API (CLI: openclaw nodes pending/approve) is a separate gateway-owned pairing store. WS nodes still require device pairing.