WebChat (macOS)

The macOS menu bar app embeds the WebChat UI as a native SwiftUI view. It connects to the Gateway and defaults to the main session for the selected agent (with a session switcher for other sessions).

• Local mode: connects directly to the local Gateway WebSocket.
• Remote mode: forwards the Gateway control port over SSH and uses that tunnel as the data plane.

Launch & debugging

• Manual: Lobster menu → “Open Chat”.

• Auto‑open for testing:

  bashCopy

  dist/OpenClaw.app/Contents/MacOS/OpenClaw --webchat
  

• Logs: ./scripts/clawlog.sh (subsystem ai.openclaw, category WebChatSwiftUI).

How it is wired

• Data plane: Gateway WS methods chat.history, chat.send, chat.abort, chat.inject and events chat, agent, presence, tick, health.
• chat.history returns display-normalized transcript rows: inline directive tags are stripped from visible text, plain-text tool-call XML payloads (including <tool_call>...</tool_call>, <function_call>...</function_call>, <tool_calls>...</tool_calls>, <function_calls>...</function_calls>, and truncated tool-call blocks) and leaked ASCII/full-width model control tokens are stripped, pure silent-token assistant rows such as exact NO_REPLY / no_reply are omitted, and oversized rows can be replaced with placeholders.
• Session: defaults to the primary session (main, or global when scope is global). The UI can switch between sessions.
• Onboarding uses a dedicated session to keep first‑run setup separate.

Security surface

• Remote mode forwards only the Gateway WebSocket control port over SSH.

Known limitations

• The UI is optimized for chat sessions (not a full browser sandbox).

Related

• WebChat
• macOS app