Managing Instances

Start, stop, and manage the lifecycle of your OpenClaw instances.

Instance lifecycle

Each instance goes through several states:

State Description
pending Instance created, awaiting provisioning
provisioning Infrastructure being set up
running Instance is live and accessible
stopped Instance paused, data preserved
error Something went wrong during provisioning or operation

Starting and stopping

You can start and stop instances from the client portal:

  1. Go to Instances
  2. Click on the instance you want to manage
  3. Use the Start or Stop buttons

Stopped instances retain their data and configuration. You are not billed for compute while stopped, but storage charges continue.

Resetting credentials

If you need to reset your instance's auth token or admin password:

  1. Navigate to the instance detail page
  2. Click Reset Credentials
  3. Copy the new credentials — they will only be shown once