My agent isn't replying

Diagnostic ladder for when you message your bot and get nothing back.

What this is

You sent your bot a message, and got nothing back — no reply, no error, just silence. There are a few common causes; work through them in order. The most likely culprits are: your instance is stopped, your channel is offline, or your AI provider key isn't working.

Try these in order

1. Is your instance running? Check the Beach dashboard. If it shows "stopped", start it. See Starting & stopping.
2. Is the channel still connected? Open Beach Settings → Channels. If the channel shows as offline, work through A channel went offline.
3. Is your provider key valid? Open your Control UI (the sd-XXXXXXXX.beachhost.io link from your dashboard) and look at the most recent session. If you see "invalid API key", "auth failed", "401", or similar, work through "Invalid API key" error.
4. Is your provider account out of credits? Anthropic and OpenAI both require a payment method on file before keys will work — and even with billing set up, you can still hit a balance limit. Log into your provider's dashboard and confirm the account is in good standing.
5. Try again after a minute. Occasionally a request hangs without a clean error. Sending a fresh message often shakes the agent loose.

Note on the boundary

A silent agent can be a Beach problem (instance stopped) or an OpenClaw problem (channel issue, provider key, no credits). The ladder above walks the Beach side first because it's faster to check, then moves into OpenClaw territory. The Control UI is where you'll see the actual error message from your agent — Beach Settings won't show it.

Related

• Starting & stopping
• A channel went offline
• "Invalid API key" error
• Getting support

Still stuck?

Contact support — see Getting support.