openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix macOS gateway PATH audit warns about nonexistent user-bin dirs and labels them 'required' [1 participants]

openclaw gateway status on macOS reports a PATH warning even when the LaunchAgent is healthy and the warned directories do not exist.

Observed warning:

Gateway service PATH missing required dirs:
/Users/jamie/.npm-global/bin,
/Users/jamie/bin,
/Users/jamie/.volta/bin,
/Users/jamie/.asdf/shims,
/Users/jamie/Library/Application Support/fnm/aliases/default/bin,
/Users/jamie/.fnm/aliases/default/bin,
/Users/jamie/.local/share/pnpm

What is actually happening

The gateway is healthy.

On this machine:

• openclaw gateway status reports the service loaded, runtime running, connectivity probe ok, and admin capable.
• launchctl print gui/$(id -u)/ai.openclaw.gateway shows the job is running with an explicit, sufficient PATH:

/opt/homebrew/opt/node/bin:/Users/jamie/.local/bin:/opt/homebrew/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin

• Several warned directories do not exist at all:
  • ~/.npm-global/bin
  • ~/bin
  • ~/.volta/bin
  • ~/.asdf/shims
  • ~/Library/Application Support/fnm/aliases/default/bin
  • ~/.fnm/aliases/default/bin
  • ~/.local/share/pnpm

So this is a cosmetic audit mismatch, not a real service fault.

Root cause

The compiled audit path check in:

• /opt/homebrew/lib/node_modules/openclaw/dist/service-audit-CDyQV4HP.js

compares the LaunchAgent PATH against a Darwin superset produced by:

• /opt/homebrew/lib/node_modules/openclaw/dist/runtime-paths-DB4SV642.js

That resolver appends common user bin directories whether they exist or are needed or not. The audit then warns if they are absent from the service PATH.

That means a machine with a deliberately minimal, working PATH still gets a warning because the audit compares against a generic preferred superset rather than a machine-specific required set.

Why this is misleading

Right now the wording says "missing required dirs", but many of these dirs are:

• nonexistent
• unused
• unnecessary for the running gateway

That makes the warning look like a service misconfiguration when it is really a heuristic preference mismatch.

Proposed fix

Tighten the audit for Darwin user-bin PATH checks so it only warns for entries that are actually meaningful, for example:

1. only warn for user bin dirs that exist on disk, or
2. only warn for dirs explicitly configured from the environment, or
3. downgrade nonexistent entries to informational and keep warnings for existing-but-missing dirs only

Any of those would avoid false positives while preserving the signal for real PATH drift.

Nice-to-have wording fix

If the current behavior is kept, the message should not say required dirs. Something like recommended PATH entries or preferred user bin dirs would be more accurate.

Environment

• openclaw 2026.4.20
• macOS 15.7.6
• LaunchAgent gateway runtime healthy