pkg/hub/server.go, line 5138-5152 (link)

The two call sites pass paths containing the shell variable $HOME — "$HOME/workspace" (flake files) and "$HOME/.openclaw/workspace" (template files). shellQuote wraps the full string in single quotes, which suppresses variable expansion in the remote shell. So mkdir -p '$HOME/.openclaw/workspace' creates a literal directory named $HOME relative to the SSH session's CWD, not the user's home directory. The flake-file call treats this as a fatal error and aborts bootstrap; the template-file call retries three times then logs a warning. Either way, the files land in the wrong place or are not written at all. The daytona bootstrap path avoids this by using a hardcoded absolute path (/home/daytona/.openclaw/workspace/); the same approach should be taken here.