restart

What restart does on OpenClaw

AI agents invoke restart to trigger actions in OpenClaw. What it does depends on the arguments the agent supplies, and its effects often reach beyond the immediate call: builds kicked off, notifications sent, workflows started.

Why restart is rated High

This tool executes a restart operation on a gateway component, which is a significant system-level action. It triggers an external operation that interrupts service, though it is reversible in principle (a restart does not destroy data). This places it in Execute rather than Destructive. The high severity reflects the potential for service disruption and the blast radius if an AI agent incorrectly triggers this.

From the tool's definition Tool name 'restart' with description 'Restart the gateway (if enabled)' indicates triggering an external operation (gateway restart) whose effects depend on system state and cannot be easily undone.

The rule that runs restart safely

PolicyLayer is an MCP gateway: it sits between your AI agents and OpenClaw, and checks every tool call against a rule you set before the call runs. Nothing changes on the server itself. For restart, this is the rule to start with:

{
  "version": "1",
  "default": "deny",
  "tools": {
    "restart": {
      "limits": [
        {
          "counter": "restart_rate",
          "window": "minute",
          "max": 10,
          "scope": "grant"
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

Questions about restart