failover-gateway

# Failover Gateway for OpenClaw

Deploy a standby OpenClaw gateway that automatically takes over when your primary goes down. Active-passive design with auto-promotion and auto-demotion.

## What You Get

- **~30 second failover** — health monitor detects primary down, promotes standby
- **Auto-recovery** — when primary comes back, standby demotes itself
- **Zero split-brain** — primary and standby use different channels (no duplicate messages)
- **Git-synced workspace** — standby pulls latest workspace on promotion
- **$12/month** — runs on a minimal VPS

## Architecture

```
PRIMARY (your main VPS)          STANDBY (failover VPS)
├─ Full stack (all channels)     ├─ Single channel only (e.g., Discord DM)
├─ All cron jobs                 ├─ No crons (recovery mode)
├─ Gateway active ✅              ├─ Gateway stopped 💤
└─ Pushes workspace to git       └─ Health monitor watches primary
                                      │
                                      ├─ Primary healthy → sleep
                                      ├─ Primary down 30s → PROMOTE
                                      └─ Primary back → DEMOTE
```

The key insight: **split your channels between primary and standby**. Don't share credentials — give each node exclusive ownership of different channels. This eliminates split-brain entirely.

### Channel Split Examples

| Setup | Primary | Standby |
|-------|---------|---------|
| RC + Discord | Rocket.Chat (full) | Discord DM only |
| Discord + Telegram | Discord (full) | Telegram DM only |
| Slack + Discord | Slack (full) | Discord DM only |

Your primary handles everything. The standby is minimal recovery — just enough to stay reachable.

## Prerequisites

- Primary OpenClaw instance running on a VPS
- A second VPS for the standby ($6-12/mo, any provider)
- [Tailscale](https://tailscale.com) mesh network (or any VPN/private network)
- Git repository for workspace sync (GitHub, GitLab, etc.)
- A second messaging channel for the standby (differen...