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Pairing

Pairing

  1. DM pairing (who is allowed to talk to the bot)
  2. Node pairing (which devices/nodes are allowed to join the gateway network)

1) DM pairing (inbound chat access)

  • 8 characters, uppercase, no ambiguous chars (0O1I).
  • Expire after 1 hour. The bot only sends the pairing message when a new request is created (roughly once per hour per sender).
  • Pending DM pairing requests are capped at 3 per channel by default; additional requests are ignored until one expires or is approved.

Approve a sender

text
openclaw pairing list telegram
openclaw pairing approve telegram <CODE>

Where the state lives

  • Pending requests: <channel>-pairing.json
  • Approved allowlist store: <channel>-allowFrom.json

2) Node device pairing (iOS/Android/macOS/headless nodes)

Approve a node device

text
openclaw devices list
openclaw devices approve <requestId>
openclaw devices reject <requestId>

Where the state lives

  • pending.json (short-lived; pending requests expire)
  • paired.json (paired devices + tokens)

Notes

  • The legacy node.pair.* API (CLI: openclaw nodes pending/approve) is a separate gateway-owned pairing store. WS nodes still require device pairing.