What this skill does

# Service Watchdog Lightweight service and endpoint monitoring for self-hosted infrastructure. Checks HTTP endpoints, TCP ports, SSL certificate expiry, and DNS resolution — then reports status in a clean, chat-friendly format. ## What It Does - **HTTP Health Checks** — GET/POST with expected status codes, response time tracking, content matching - **TCP Port Checks** — Verify services are listening (databases, mail servers, game servers, etc.) - **SSL Certificate Monitoring** — Days until expiry, issuer info, auto-warn thresholds - **DNS Resolution** — Verify domains resolve correctly, detect DNS hijacking - **Smart Summaries** — One-glance status for all your services, with trend data - **Alert Logic** — Configurable thresholds, cooldowns, and severity levels to prevent alert fatigue ## Quick Start ### 1. Create a watchlist Create `watchdog.json` in your workspace root: ```json { "services": [ { "name": "Home Assistant", "type": "http", "url": "http://192.168.1.100:8123", "expect_status": 200, "timeout_ms": 5000 }, { "name": "Proxmox", "type": "https", "url": "https://proxmox.local:8006", "expect_status": 200, "ssl_warn_days": 14, "timeout_ms": 5000 }, { "name": "PostgreSQL", "type": "tcp", "host": "db.local", "port": 5432, "timeout_ms": 3000 }, { "name": "My Domain", "type": "dns", "domain": "example.com", "expect_ip": "93.184.216.34" } ], "defaults": { "timeout_ms": 5000, "ssl_warn_days": 14, "alert_cooldown_min": 30, "history_retention_days": 30 } } ``` ### 2. Run a check ```bash bash skills/service-watchdog/watchdog.sh ``` Output example: ``` 🟢 Home Assistant — 200 OK (142ms) 🟢 Proxmox — 200 OK (89ms) | SSL: 47 days 🟢 PostgreSQL — port 5432 open (12ms) 🟢 My Domain — resolves to 93.184.216.34 ✓ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 4/4 healthy | avg response: 81ms | checked: 2026-02-24 16:30 UTC ``` ### 3. Detailed report ```bash bash skills/service-watchdog/watchdog.sh --report ``` Shows trend data: uptime percentage, P95 response times, incident history. ### 4. JSON output (for cron integration) ```bash bash skills/service-watchdog/watchdog.sh --json ``` ### 5. Check SSL only ```bash bash skills/service-watchdog/watchdog.sh --ssl-only ``` ### 6. Alert summary (for messaging) ```bash bash skills/service-watchdog/watchdog.sh --alerts-only ``` Only outputs services that need attention (down, slow, SSL expiring). ## Cron Integration Add to your OpenClaw cron for continuous monitoring: **Every 5 minutes (lightweight check):** ``` Run `bash skills/service-watchdog/watchdog.sh --json` and report only if any service is unhealthy. ``` **Daily SSL report:** ``` Run `bash skills/service-watchdog/watchdog.sh --ssl-only` and report expiring certificates. ``` ## Configuration Reference ### Service types | Type | Required Fields | Optional Fields | |------|----------------|-----------------| | `http` / `https` | `url` | `expect_status`, `expect_body`, `method`, `headers`, `timeout_ms`, `ssl_warn_days` | | `tcp` | `host`, `port` | `timeout_ms` | | `dns` | `domain` | `expect_ip`, `nameserver` | ### Global defaults | Field | Default | Description | |-------|---------|-------------| | `timeout_ms` | 5000 | Request timeout | | `ssl_warn_days` | 14 | SSL expiry warning threshold | | `alert_cooldown_min` | 30 | Min minutes between repeated alerts | | `history_retention_days` | 30 | How long to keep check history | | `history_file` | `watchdog-history.csv` | Path for check history data | ## How the Agent Should Use This When the user asks about service status, infrastructure health, or "are my services up?": 1. Run `bash skills/service-watchdog/watchdog.sh` for a quick overview 2. Run with `--report` for detailed trends and history 3. Run with `--alerts-only` for just the problems 4. Run with `--ssl-only` to check certificate status 5. Run with `--json` when you need structured data for further analysis For proactive monitoring, run checks in cron jobs and only alert the user when something is wrong. ## Requirements - `curl` (for HTTP/HTTPS checks) - `openssl` (for SSL certificate checks) - `nc` or `ncat` (for TCP port checks) — falls back to bash `/dev/tcp` if unavailable - `dig` or `nslookup` (for DNS checks) — falls back to `host` command - `jq` (for JSON config parsing) All standard on most Linux distributions. No external APIs or accounts needed.