---
summary: "A lobster sometimes visits the Control UI. This page explains just enough."
read_when:
  - You saw a small lobster in your sidebar and want answers
  - You want to turn lobster visits on or off
  - You right-clicked a lobster and feel bad about it
title: "The Lobster"
sidebarTitle: "The Lobster"
---

If you use the [Control UI](/web/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. Half of session/page-load rolls skip scheduled visits entirely. Otherwise, the base first-arrival delay is 2–10 minutes, with 30–60-minute gaps between visits. Familiarity adjusts those timings: new visitors arrive after 2.6–13 minutes, while familiar ones arrive after 1.4–7 minutes and return after 24–48 minutes. Frequent dismissals can make a visitor wary, extending its return gaps by another 70%.

Status visits keep their own schedule: **when your Gateway disconnects**, the lobster comes out and paces, visibly worried, until the connection is back. During runs lasting more than ten minutes, it settles in for a quiet vigil. The visits toggle and dismissals still take precedence.

## 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.
- **Press and hold** to pet it. There is a heart. Any accumulated grudges are forgotten.
- **Right-click it** to open a small menu: **Dismiss** shoos it away for the rest of the page load, and **Dismiss and don't show again** turns Lobster visits off for good. It will not take either personally. It will, however, remember.
- **Watch it when a run finishes.** Lobsters take genuine pride in your completed work, and it shows when things went well. When things did not go well, they take that seriously too.
- **Move your cursor around.** You are being watched. Affectionately.

## 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.

Next to it sits **Lobster sounds**, which is off by default and stays off until you decide otherwise. Turn it on and the lobster becomes very quietly audible when touched. It is a small sound. It is a good sound.

## 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.

Hover a filled slot and it will tell you who visited first, and when. The Lobsterdex never forgets a first meeting, which is more than can be said for most of us.

## Field notes

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

- Lobsters visit the [dream scene](/concepts/memory) too — the Memory tab on the Agents page — 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.
- Not every lobster that crosses your sidebar is your lobster. Most of them do not even stop.
- At least one recorded visitor was not a lobster. It maintains that it is.
- People who have used the same browser for a long time report their lobster arrives sooner, stays longer, and waves at them. People who shoo a lot describe a certain distance.
- After a Gateway upgrade, pay attention to what the first visitor is carrying.
- The lobster in the sidebar has a cousin in the terminal. It shows up in the `openclaw` banner on days of its own choosing, and no one has successfully predicted which.
- On the days the cousin appears, sidebar lobsters have been seen dressed nautically. The two refuse to explain the connection.
- During very long runs, the lobster stops playing and settles in to wait with you. Solidarity.
- When something crosses the ledge, the resident stops what it is doing and watches. You would too.
- After bad news, some lobsters tidy the ledge. It seems to help them.
- Lobsters remember anniversaries even when you do not. If yours shows up in a party hat on an unremarkable day, check the Lobsterdex for the date you met.
- Devoted hosts report their lobsters acquiring titles over the years. There is no known ceremony.
- The dream-scene sleeper is not entirely asleep. Press gently and see.

## 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.
