OpenClaw remote setup (HTTP)

Neotoma with OpenClaw · Remote setup for cloud or multi-machine deployments.

Setup

If OpenClaw runs on a different machine or in the cloud, start with local install on your host machine, then configure remote access:

  1. Install a tunnel provider — Neotoma's --tunnel flag needs either ngrok or Cloudflare Tunnel (cloudflared) installed on your machine. Install one:
    # ngrok (via Homebrew)
    brew install ngrok
    ngrok config add-authtoken <YOUR_NGROK_TOKEN>
    
    # — or Cloudflare Tunnel —
    brew install cloudflared

    ngrok requires a free account and auth token from dashboard.ngrok.com. You can set the token as an environment variable instead of running ngrok config:

    # In your shell profile or .env
    export NGROK_AUTHTOKEN=<YOUR_NGROK_TOKEN>

    Cloudflare Tunnel works without an account for quick tunnels. If both providers are installed, Neotoma auto-detects which to use; pass --tunnel-provider ngrok or --tunnel-provider cloudflare to choose explicitly.

  2. Start the API server with a tunnel — the --tunnel flag auto-provisions a public HTTPS URL via ngrok or Cloudflare (whichever is installed)
    neotoma api start --env prod --tunnel

    The tunnel URL is printed to the console and written to /tmp/ngrok-mcp-url.txt. You can also use a reverse proxy or your own domain instead of --tunnel.

  3. Point OpenClaw at the remote endpoint — use the tunnel URL for the Neotoma API's OpenAPI spec (https://<tunnel-host>/openapi.yaml) or the remote MCP endpoint (https://<tunnel-host>/mcp). The Neotoma API supports the MCP OAuth authorization flow for authenticated access.

If MCP is not yet available in your OpenClaw environment, use the Neotoma CLI directly from the same machine as a fallback:

neotoma store --json='[{"entity_type":"task","title":"Follow up","status":"open"}]'
neotoma entities list --type task

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