Skip to main content
Scanning for Gateway beacons over mDNS and wide-area DNS-SD. Part of the openclaw gateway reference.

​
Discover gateways (Bonjour)

gateway discover scans for Gateway beacons (_openclaw-gw._tcp).
  • Multicast DNS-SD: local.
  • Unicast DNS-SD (wide-area Bonjour): choose a domain (example: openclaw.internal.) and set up split DNS + a DNS server; see Bonjour.
Only gateways with Bonjour discovery enabled (default) advertise the beacon. TXT hints on every beacon: role (gateway role hint), transport (transport hint, e.g. gateway), gatewayPort (WebSocket port, usually 18789), tailnetDns (MagicDNS hostname, when available), gatewayTls / gatewayTlsSha256 (TLS enabled + cert fingerprint). sshPort and cliPath are published only in full discovery mode (discovery.mdns.mode: "full"; default is "minimal", which omits them — clients then default SSH targets to port 22).

​
gateway discover

​
number
default:"2000"
Per-command timeout (browse/resolve).
​
boolean
Machine-readable output (also disables styling/spinner).
Examples:
  • Scans local. plus the configured wide-area domain when one is enabled.
  • wsUrl in JSON output is derived from the resolved service endpoint, not from TXT-only hints such as lanHost or tailnetDns.
  • discovery.mdns.mode controls sshPort/cliPath publication on both local. mDNS and wide-area DNS-SD (see above).