# Is OpenClaw HIPAA compliant? There is no vendor to sign a BAA with - Tool: Compliance - Last updated: August 2026 ## TL;DR The question has no yes or no answer. OpenClaw is MIT-licensed software from the non-profit OpenClaw Foundation that you run on your own machine, so there is no hosted service to buy and nobody to sign a Business Associate Agreement with — and no OpenClaw document we could find mentions HIPAA, PHI or a BAA. The obligation moves to whoever you wire in: the configured model provider, the ClawRouter proxy that ships bundled and enabled by default, the chat app you message the gateway from, and any ClawHub skills installed on it. ## Frequently asked questions ### It runs on our own hardware. Doesn't that settle it? It settles where the process runs, not where the text goes. The gateway is a router: your message reaches a chat operator before the gateway reads it, and your prompt reaches a model provider after. OpenClaw says this itself — "If your configured gateway forwards data to AI models or other third-party services, those services will handle data according to their own policies." Self-hosting removes one vendor from the middle. It does not remove the ones at either end. ### What is ClawRouter, and why do you keep bringing it up? It is a model proxy the project operates at clawrouter.openclaw.ai, and it is the one place the "nothing leaves your machine" story breaks. Its documentation states: "The plugin ships bundled with OpenClaw ( enabledByDefault: true ); you only need an issued ClawRouter credential." So it is on by default and starts carrying traffic the moment a credential exists. It publishes no privacy policy, no data processing agreement and no BAA, and its own docs mention a content-retention state without saying what that state is. If you need a BAA, take it out of the path and point the gateway at a provider you hold an agreement with directly. ### Who do we actually sign a BAA with, then? Whoever receives the data. In practice that is the model provider whose API key is in your gateway configuration, and the operator of any chat channel the gateway is attached to. Neither agreement is arranged through OpenClaw, and neither is affected by anything OpenClaw publishes. The alternative is to have no hosted model in the path at all: the docs list local runtimes including Ollama, llama.cpp, LM Studio, vLLM and SGLang, and inference on hardware you control has no third party to sign with. ### Does ClawHub see what our team types? Not according to its telemetry documentation, which lists what is not collected: "No folder paths or folder-derived identifiers. No file contents. No per-run logs, prompts, or other CLI output." The install event carries the skill slug and version, it is only sent when you are signed in, and it can be switched off with an environment variable. The real ClawHub question is a different one: the registry publishes no legal, privacy or terms page — those addresses return 404 — while the skills it distributes run inside an agent with filesystem and messaging access. Treat it as a supply-chain risk, not a telemetry risk. ### We talk to the bot from Slack. Is that a problem? It is the first hop and the one people forget, because it happens before any of the software you audited is involved. The message sits with the channel operator whether or not the gateway ever processes it, and it stays in the thread afterwards. Open the thread you use, search it for a real surname, and decide based on what comes back. If sensitive text is in there, that is a conversation with the channel operator about their agreement with you — not with OpenClaw. ### One of our engineers connected an iPhone. Is Health data flowing somewhere? Only if someone deliberately switched it on: the health.summary command is off by default and needs both consent on the device and an explicit gateway authorization. If it is on, the phone computes an aggregate — steps, sleep, average resting heart rate, workout count and duration — and the docs are direct about where it goes: "When an agent requests it, the aggregate reaches the configured AI provider and may remain in chat history." Raw samples stay on the device. This is consumer fitness data and the docs disclaim medical use, but it is a real outbound health path and worth checking before someone else does. ### Is OpenClaw HIPAA certified? Nothing is. There is no government HIPAA certification for a product or a company — the mechanism is a signed Business Associate Agreement with every vendor that touches protected health information, plus the safeguards you implement and document yourself. In OpenClaw's case there is an additional reason the question does not land: it is MIT-licensed software from a non-profit foundation, with no hosted service and no commercial counterparty. There is nobody to certify anything, and no OpenClaw document we could find mentions HIPAA. --- Source: https://www.rapidevelopers.com/compliance/is-openclaw-hipaa-compliant © RapidDev — https://www.rapidevelopers.com/compliance/is-openclaw-hipaa-compliant