The Lobster

If you use the Control UI long enough, at some point a small lobster will wander into the bottom of your sidebar, look around, and make itself at home for a few minutes.

This is normal. This is OpenClaw.

What you are looking at

Every session hatches its own lobster: its color, size, build, claw proportions, accessories, and personality are rolled fresh each time you load the page. Some are round, some are tall, some have claws that are frankly too big for them. Some nap constantly. Some never sit still. One of them waves a lot.

Hover over a visitor and it will tell you its name.

When it shows up

Sometimes. That is the point.

The lobster is a guest, not furniture. It wanders in when it feels like it, stays a while, and leaves. Some sessions it never shows up at all. There is exactly one situation where it always appears: when your Gateway disconnects, the lobster comes out and paces, visibly worried, until the connection is back. If the lobster looks stressed, check your Gateway.

Things you can do

• Hover to learn its name.
• Click it to say hi. It startles, which is rude of you, but it forgives quickly.
• Click it repeatedly and you will learn something about lobster patience. Keep going and you will learn something about lobster dignity.
• Right-click it to shoo it away for the rest of the page load. It will not take it personally. It will, however, be gone.
• Watch it when a run finishes. Lobsters take genuine pride in your completed work.

Turning visits off (or back on)

Settings → Appearance → Lobster visits.

The toggle is browser-local and does exactly what it says. Off means never, including the worried disconnect pacing. Your Gateway status dot continues to work regardless; the lobster was never your only source of truth, just the most sympathetic one.

Reduced-motion users get calm, stationary lobsters automatically.

The Lobsterdex

Next to the visits toggle lives the Lobsterdex: one silhouette for every coloration known to science, filling in with color as each kind visits you for the first time. It lives entirely in your browser. Nothing is tracked, nothing is synced, nothing is gamified. It is just a shelf.

Most slots fill in on their own over time. A few will take considerably longer. One of them glows.

Field notes

Collected observations from people who spend too much time watching their sidebar:

• Lobsters visit the Dreams page too, where they are asleep. Observers report the sleeping lobster looks suspiciously familiar.
• Night-shift users report their visitors yawn a lot after 10pm.
• Lobsters have been seen shedding. Witnesses describe the experience as "a lot" and the lobster afterwards as "noticeably bigger."
• Some visitors do not come alone.
• Around certain times of the year, lobsters have been observed wearing things.
• There is one day each year when every lobster looks like it walked out of an old logo. Nobody will tell you which day.

Privacy

Everything on this page happens locally in your browser: the randomness, the schedule, the Lobsterdex. No lobster data leaves your machine. OpenClaw does not know which lobsters you have met, and frankly it is jealous.