openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix [Feature]: Provide a lightweight Docker image variant with minimal pre-installed plugins to reduce image size

Summary

Request a minimal, lightweight Docker image for OpenClaw by removing unnecessary default plugins and shrinking the large node_modules directory (≈1.6GB).

Problem to solve

The current official OpenClaw Docker image is excessively large due to an excessive number of pre-installed plugins and a huge node_modules folder (around 1.6GB). This causes slow image pulls, excessive disk usage, higher memory consumption, longer startup times, and poor user experience for users who only need core functionality without all extra plugins.

Proposed solution

1. Publish an official minimal/lightweight Docker image tag (e.g., openclaw:latest-minimal, openclaw:light) that only includes core runtime and zero or essential default plugins.
2. Remove all non-required default plugins from the minimal image to drastically reduce the node_modules directory size.
3. Allow users to manually install only the plugins they need after deployment.
4. Optimize the Dockerfile to clean up build dependencies and cache files to further shrink image size.

Alternatives considered

1. Manually building a custom image by removing plugins post-build: Weak approach because it’s not official, requires extra user effort, lacks maintainability, and may break during version updates.
2. Compressing the existing large image: Does not solve the root cause (large node_modules), still causes slow extraction and runtime bloat.
3. Using multi-stage builds without reducing plugins: Cannot effectively reduce the final image size since node_modules remains oversized.

Impact

Affected users: All users deploying OpenClaw via Docker (self-hosted, server, cloud instances). Severity: Medium–High; severely impacts deployment speed and resource usage. Frequency: Occurs on every image pull, container start, and disk usage check. Consequences: Slow deployment, high disk/memory consumption, wasted bandwidth, and poor performance on low-resource machines.

Evidence/examples

The node_modules directory alone occupies ≈1.6GB in the current image. Large Docker images lead to slow pulls in slow network environments. Many users only require core functions and do not use most default plugins.

Additional information

The lightweight image should remain fully compatible with the official plugin installation system so users can add plugins on demand. This change will significantly improve deployment efficiency for production, development, and edge environments.