Upgrade OpenClaw to 2026.3.28

[github-actions]

Automated Upgrade: 2026.3.11 → 2026.3.28

Test Results

Test	Result
Docker image builds	✅
Version matches Dockerfile	✅
Config valid JSON + correct defaults	✅
Config owned by openclaw user	✅
Gateway process running	✅
Gateway HTTP responds 200	✅
Tailscale binary present	✅
Channel plugins loaded	✅
Backup config valid	✅
openclaw doctor completes	✅
App Platform E2E	✅ Passed

⚠️ Known Upstream Regressions

• #56915: [Bug]: [Bug] Skills scanner ignores subdirectories under ~/.openclaw/skills/
• #57112: [Bug]: Cron payload model override ignored - LiveSessionModelSwitchError on 2026.3.28
• #56949: [Bug]: 飞书插件 footer 配置项（elapsed/status）在新版本中丢失
• #56942: [Bug]:
• #57618: [Bug]: Mattermost channel config rejected after upgrade to 2026.3.28 — "must NOT have additional properties"

Review these before merging.

Release Notes

openclaw 2026.3.28

Breaking

• Providers/Qwen: remove the deprecated qwen-portal-auth OAuth integration for portal.qwen.ai; migrate to Model Studio with openclaw onboard --auth-choice modelstudio-api-key. (#52709) Thanks @pomelo-nwu.
• Config/Doctor: drop automatic config migrations older than two months; very old legacy keys now fail validation instead of being rewritten on load or by openclaw doctor.

Changes

• xAI/tools: move the bundled xAI provider to the Responses API, add first-class x_search, and auto-enable the xAI plugin from owned web-search and tool config so bundled Grok auth/configured search flows work without manual plugin toggles. (#56048) Thanks @huntharo.
• xAI/onboarding: let the bundled Grok web-search plugin offer optional x_search setup during openclaw onboard and openclaw configure --section web, including an x_search model picker with the shared xAI key.
• MiniMax: add image generation provider for image-01 model, supporting generate and image-to-image editing with aspect ratio control. (#54487) Thanks @liyuan97.
• Plugins/hooks: add async requireApproval to before_tool_call hooks, letting plugins pause tool execution and prompt the user for approval via the exec approval overlay, Telegram buttons, Discord interactions, or the /approve command on any channel. The /approve command now handles both exec and plugin approvals with automatic fallback. (#55339) Thanks @vaclavbelak and @joshavant.
• ACP/channels: add current-conversation ACP binds for Discord, BlueBubbles, and iMessage so /acp spawn codex --bind here can turn the current chat into a Codex-backed workspace without creating a child thread, and document the distinction between chat surface, ACP session, and runtime workspace.
• OpenAI/apply_patch: enable apply_patch by default for OpenAI and OpenAI Codex models, and align its sandbox policy access with write permissions.
• Plugins/CLI backends: move bundled Claude CLI, Codex CLI, and Gemini CLI inference defaults onto the plugin surface, add bundled Gemini CLI backend support, and replace gateway run --claude-cli-logs with generic --cli-backend-logs while keeping the old flag as a compatibility alias.
• Plugins/startup: auto-load bundled provider and CLI-backend plugins from explicit config refs, so bundled Claude CLI, Codex CLI, and Gemini CLI message-provider setups no longer need manual plugins.allow entries.
• Podman: simplify the container setup around the current rootless user, install the launch helper under ~/.local/bin, and document the host-CLI openclaw --container <name> ... workflow instead of a dedicated openclaw service user.
• Slack/tool actions: add an explicit upload-file Slack action that routes file uploads through the existing Slack upload transport, with optional filename/title/comment overrides for channels and DMs.
• Message actions/files: start unifying file-first sends on the canonical upload-file action by adding explicit support for Microsoft Teams and Google Chat, and by exposing BlueBubbles file sends through upload-file while keeping the legacy sendAttachment alias.
• Plugins/Matrix TTS: send auto-TTS replies as native Matrix voice bubbles instead of generic audio attachments. (#37080) thanks @Matthew19990919.
• CLI: add openclaw config schema to print the generated JSON schema for openclaw.json. (#54523) Thanks @kvokka.
• Config/TTS: auto-migrate legacy speech config on normal reads and secret resolution, keep legacy diagnostics for Doctor, and remove regular-mode runtime fallback for old bundled tts.<provider> API-key shapes.
• Memory/plugins: move the pre-compaction memory flush plan behind the active memory plugin contract so memory-core owns flush prompts and target-path policy instead of hardcoded core logic.
• MiniMax: trim model catalog to M2.7 only, removing legacy M2, M2.1, M2.5, and VL-01 models. (#54487) Thanks @liyuan97.
• Plugins/runtime: expose runHeartbeatOnce in the plugin runtime system namespace so plugins can trigger a single heartbeat cycle with an explicit delivery target override (e.g. heartbeat: { target: "last" }). (#40299) Thanks @loveyana.
• Agents/compaction: preserve the post-compaction AGENTS refresh on stale-usage preflight compaction for both immediate replies and queued followups. (#49479) Thanks @jared596.
• Agents/compaction: surface safeguard-specific cancel reasons and relabel benign manual /compact no-op cases as skipped instead of failed. (#51072) Thanks @afurm.
• Docs: add pnpm docs:check-links:anchors for Mintlify anchor validation while keeping scripts/docs-link-audit.mjs as the stable link-audit entrypoint. (#55912) Thanks @velvet-shark.
• Tavily: mark outbound API requests with X-Client-Source: openclaw so Tavily can attribute OpenClaw-originated traffic. (#55335) Thanks @lakshyaag-tavily.

Fixes

• Agents/Anthropic: recover unhandled provider stop reasons (e.g. sensitive) as structured assistant errors instead of crashing the agent run. (#56639)
• Google/models: resolve Gemini 3.1 pro, flash, and flash-lite for all Google provider aliases by passing the actual runtime provider ID and adding a template-provider fallback; fix flash-lite prefix ordering. (#56567)
• OpenAI Codex/image tools: register Codex for media understanding and route image prompts through Codex instructions so image analysis no longer fails on missing provider registration or missing instructions. (#54829) Thanks @neeravmakwana.
• Agents/image tool: restore the generic image-runtime fallback when no provider-specific media-understanding provider is registered, so image analysis works again for providers like openrouter and minimax-portal. (#54858) Thanks @MonkeyLeeT.
• WhatsApp: fix infinite echo loop in self-chat DM mode where the bot's own outbound replies were re-processed as new inbound user messages. (#54570) Thanks @joelnishanth
• Telegram/splitting: replace proportional text estimate with verified HTML-length search so long messages split at word boundaries instead of mid-word; gracefully degrade when tag overhead exceeds the limit. (#56595)
• Telegram/delivery: skip whitespace-only and hook-blanked text replies in bot delivery to prevent GrammyError 400 empty-text crashes. (#56620)
• Telegram/send: validate replyToMessageId at all four API sinks with a shared normalizer that rejects non-numeric, NaN, and mixed-content strings. (#56587)
• Mistral: normalize OpenAI-compatible request flags so official Mistral API runs no longer fail with remaining 422 status code (no body) chat errors.
• Control UI/config: keep sensitive raw config hidden by default, replace the blank blocked editor with an explicit reveal-to-edit state, and restore raw JSON editing without auto-exposing secrets. Fixes #55322.
• CLI/zsh: defer compdef registration until compinit is available so zsh completion loads cleanly with plugin managers and manual setups. (#56555)
• BlueBubbles/debounce: guard debounce flush against null message text by sanitizing at the enqueue boundary and adding an independent combiner guard. (#56573)
• Auto-reply: suppress JSON-wrapped {"action":"NO_REPLY"} control envelopes before channel delivery with a strict single-key detector; preserves media when text is only a silent envelope. (#56612)
• ACP/ACPX agent registry: align OpenClaw's ACPX built-in agent mirror with the latest openclaw/acpx command defaults and built-in aliases, pin versioned npx built-ins to exact versions, and stop unknown ACP agent ids from falling through to raw --agent command execution on the MCP-proxy path. (#28321) Thanks @m0nkmaster and @vincentkoc.
• Security/audit: extend web search key audit to recognize Gemini, Grok/xAI, Kimi, Moonshot, and OpenRouter credentials via a boundary-safe bundled-web-search registry shim. (#56540)
• Docs/FAQ: remove broken Xfinity SSL troubleshooting cross-links from English and zh-CN FAQ entries — both sections already contain the full workaround inline. (#56500)
• Telegram: deliver verbose tool summaries inside forum topic sessions again, so threaded topic chats now match DM verbose behavior. (#43236) Thanks @frankbuild.
• BlueBubbles/CLI agents: restore inbound prompt image refs for CLI routed turns, reapply embedded runner image size guardrails, and cover both CLI image transport paths with regression tests. (#51373)
• BlueBubbles/groups: optionally enrich unnamed participant lists with local macOS Contacts names after group gating passes, so group member context can show names instead of only raw phone numbers.
• Discord/reconnect: drain stale gateway sockets, clear cached resume state before forced fresh reconnects, and fail closed when old sockets refuse to die so Discord recovery stops looping on poisoned resume state. (#54697) Thanks @ngutman.
• iMessage: stop leaking inline [[reply_to:...]] tags into delivered text by sending reply_to as RPC metadata and stripping stray directive tags from outbound messages. (#39512) Thanks @mvanhorn.
• CLI/plugins: make routed commands use the same auto-enabled bundled-channel snapshot as gateway startup, so configured bundled channels like Slack load without requiring a prior config rewrite. (#54809) Thanks @neeravmakwana.
• CLI/message send: write manual openclaw message send deliveries into the resolved agent session transcript again by always threading the default CLI agent through outbound mirroring. (#54187) Thanks @KevInTheCloud5617.
• CLI/onboarding: show the Kimi Code API key option again in the Moonshot setup menu so the interactive picker includes all Kimi setup paths together. Fixes #54412 Thanks @sparkyrider
• Agents/status: use provider-aware context window lookup for fresh Anthropic 4.6 model overrides so /status shows the correct 1.0m window instead of an underreported shared-cache minimum. (#54796) Thanks @neeravmakwana.
• OpenAI/WebSocket: preserve reasoning replay metadata and tool-call item ids on WebSocket tool turns, and start a fresh response chain when full-context resend is required. (#53856) Thanks @xujingchen1996.
• OpenAI/WS: restore reasoning blocks for Responses WebSocket runs and keep reasoning/tool-call replay metadata intact so resumed sessions do not lose or break follow-up reasoning-capable turns. (#53856) Thanks @xujingchen1996.
• Agents/errors: surface provider quota/reset details when available, but keep HTML/Cloudflare rate-limit pages on the generic fallback so raw error pages are not shown to users. (#54512) Thanks @bugkill3r.
• Claude CLI: switch the bundled Claude CLI backend to stream-json output so watchdogs see progress on long runs, and keep session/usage metadata even when Claude finishes with an empty result line. (#49698) Thanks @felear2022.
• Claude CLI/MCP: always pass a strict generated --mcp-config overlay for background Claude CLI runs, including the empty-server case, so Claude does not inherit ambient user/global MCP servers. (#54961) Thanks @markojak.
• Agents/embedded replies: surface mid-turn 429 and overload failures when embedded runs end without a user-visible reply, while preserving successful media-only replies that still use legacy mediaUrl. (#50930) Thanks @infichen.
• Chat/UI: move the chat send button onto the shared ghost-button theme styling, while keeping the stop button icon readable on the danger state. (#55075) Thanks @bottenbenny.
• WhatsApp/allowFrom: show a specific allowFrom policy error for valid blocked targets instead of the misleading <E.164|group JID> format hint. Thanks @mcaxtr.
• Agents/cooldowns: scope rate-limit cooldowns per model so one 429 no longer blocks every model on the same auth profile, replace the exponential 1 min -> 1 h escalation with a stepped 30 s / 1 min / 5 min ladder, and surface a user-facing countdown message when all models are rate-limited. (#49834) Thanks @kiranvk-2011.
• Agents/embedded transport errors: distinguish common network failures like connection refused, DNS lookup failure, and interrupted sockets from true timeouts in embedded-run user messaging and lifecycle diagnostics. (#51419) Thanks @scoootscooob.
• Telegram/pairing: ignore self-authored DM message updates so bot-pinned status cards and similar service updates do not trigger bogus pairing requests or re-enter inbound dispatch. (#54530) thanks @huntharo
• Mattermost/replies: keep pairing replies, slash-command fallback replies, and model-picker messages on the resolved config path so exec: SecretRef bot tokens work across all outbound reply branches. (#48347) thanks @mathiasnagler.
• Microsoft Teams/config: accept the existing welcomeCard, groupWelcomeCard, promptStarters, and feedback/reflection keys in strict config validation so already-supported Teams runtime settings stop failing schema checks. (#54679) Thanks @gumclaw.
• MCP/channels: add a Gateway-backed channel MCP bridge with Codex/Claude-facing conversation tools, Claude channel notifications, and safer stdio bridge lifecycle handling for reconnects and routed session discovery.
• Plugins/SDK: thread moduleUrl through plugin-sdk alias resolution so user-installed plugins outside the openclaw directory (e.g. ~/.openclaw/extensions/) correctly resolve openclaw/plugin-sdk/* subpath imports, and gate plugin-sdk:check-exports in release:check. (#54283) Thanks @xieyongliang.
• Config/web fetch: allow the documented tools.web.fetch.maxResponseBytes setting in runtime schema validation so valid configs no longer fail with unrecognized-key errors. (#53401) Thanks @erhhung.
• Message tool/buttons: keep the shared buttons schema optional in merged tool definitions so plain action=send calls stop failing validation when no buttons are provided. (#54418) Thanks @adzendo.
• Agents/openai-compatible tool calls: deduplicate repeated tool call ids across live assistant messages and replayed history so OpenAI-compatible backends no longer reject duplicate tool_call_id values with HTTP 400. (#40996) Thanks @xaeon2026.
• Models/openai-completions: default non-native OpenAI-compatible providers to omit tool-definition strict fields unless users explicitly opt back in, so tool calling keeps working on providers that reject that option. (#45497) Thanks @sahancava.
• Plugins/context engines: retry strict legacy assemble() calls without the new prompt field when older engines reject it, preserving prompt-aware retrieval compatibility for pre-prompt plugins. (#50848) thanks @danhdoan.
• CLI/update status: explicitly say up to date when the local version already matches npm latest, while keeping the availability logic unchanged. (#51409) Thanks @dongzhenye.
• Daemon/Linux: stop flagging non-gateway systemd services as duplicate gateways just because their unit files mention OpenClaw, reducing false-positive doctor/log noise. (#45328) Thanks @gregretkowski.
• Feishu: close WebSocket connections on monitor stop/abort so ghost connections no longer persist, preventing duplicate event processing and resource leaks across restart cycles. (#52844) Thanks @schumilin.
• Feishu: use the original message create_time instead of Date.now() for inbound timestamps so offline-retried messages carry the correct authoring time, preventing mis-targeted agent actions on stale instructions. (#52809) Thanks @schumilin.
• Control UI/Skills: open skill detail dialogs with the browser modal lifecycle so clicking a skill row keeps the panel centered instead of rendering it off-screen at the bottom of the page.
• Matrix/replies: include quoted poll question/options in inbound reply context so the agent sees the original poll content when users reply to Matrix poll messages. (#55056) Thanks @alberthild.
• Matrix/plugins: keep plugin bootstrap from crashing when built runtime mixes bare and deep matrix-js-sdk entrypoints, so unrelated channels do not get taken down during plugin load. (#56273) Thanks @aquaright1.
• Agents/sandbox: honor tools.sandbox.tools.alsoAllow, let explicit sandbox re-allows remove matching built-in default-deny tools, and keep sandbox explain/error guidance aligned with the effective sandbox tool policy. (#54492) Thanks @ngutman.
• Agents/sandbox: make blocked-tool guidance glob-aware again, redact/sanitize session-specific explain hints for safer copy-paste, and avoid leaking control-character session keys in those hints. (#54684) Thanks @ngutman.
• Agents/compaction: trigger timeout recovery compaction before retrying high-context LLM timeouts so embedded runs stop repeating oversized requests. (#46417) thanks @joeykrug.
• Agents/compaction: reconcile sessions.json.compactionCount after a late embedded auto-compaction success so persisted session counts catch up once the handler reports completion. (#45493) Thanks @jackal092927.
• Agents/failover: classify Codex accountId token extraction failures as auth errors so model fallback continues to the next configured candidate. (#55206) Thanks @cosmicnet.
• Plugins/runtime: reuse only compatible active plugin registries across tools, providers, web search, and channel bootstrap, align /tools/invoke plugin loading with the session workspace, and retry outbound channel recovery when the pinned channel surface changes so plugin tools and channels stop disappearing or re-registering from mismatched runtime loads. Thanks @gumadeiras.
• Talk/macOS: stop direct system-voice failures from replaying system speech, use app-locale fallback for shared watchdog timing, and add regression coverage for the macOS fallback route and language-aware timeout policy. (#53511) thanks @hongsw.
• Discord/gateway cleanup: keep late Carbon reconnect-exhausted errors suppressed through startup/dispose cleanup so Discord monitor shutdown no longer crashes on late gateway close events. (#55373) Thanks @Takhoffman.
• Discord/gateway shutdown: treat expected reconnect-exhausted events during intentional lifecycle stop as clean shutdowns so startup-abort cleanup no longer surfaces false gateway failures. (#55324) Thanks @joelnishanth.
• Discord/gateway shutdown: suppress reconnect-exhausted events that were already buffered before teardown flips lifecycleStopping, so stale-socket Discord restarts no longer crash the whole gateway. Fixes #55403 and #55421. Thanks @lml2468 and @vincentkoc.
• GitHub Copilot/auth refresh: treat large expires_at values as seconds epochs and clamp far-future runtime auth refresh timers so Copilot token refresh cannot fall into a setTimeout overflow hot loop. (#55360) Thanks @michael-abdo.
• Agents/status: use the persisted runtime session model in session_status when no explicit override exists, and honor per-agent thinkingDefault in both session_status and /status. (#55425) Thanks @scoootscooob, @xaeon2026, and @ysfbsf.
• Heartbeat/runner: guarantee the interval timer is re-armed after heartbeat runs and unexpected runner errors so scheduled heartbeats do not silently stop after an interrupted cycle. (#52270) Thanks @MiloStack.
• Config/Doctor: rewrite stale bundled plugin load paths from legacy extensions/* locations to the packaged bundled path, including directory-name mismatches and slash-suffixed config entries. (#55054) Thanks @SnowSky1.
• WhatsApp/mentions: stop treating mentions embedded in quoted messages as direct mentions so replying to a message that @mentioned the bot no longer falsely triggers mention gating. (#52711) Thanks @lurebat.
• Matrix: keep separate 2-person rooms out of DM routing after m.direct seeds successfully, while still honoring explicit is_direct state and startup fallback recovery. (#54890) thanks @private-peter
• Agents/ollama fallback: surface non-2xx Ollama HTTP errors with a leading status code so HTTP 503 responses trigger model fallback again. (#55214) Thanks @bugkill3r.
• Feishu/tools: stop synthetic agent ids like agent-spawner from being treated as Feishu account ids during tool execution, so tools fall back to the configured/default Feishu account unless the contextual id is a real enabled Feishu account. (#55627) Thanks @MonkeyLeeT.
• Google/tools: strip empty required: [] arrays from Gemini tool schemas so optional-only tool parameters no longer trigger Google validator 400s. (#52106) Thanks @oliviareid-svg.
• Onboarding/TUI/local gateways: show the resolved gateway port in setup output, clarify no-daemon local health/dashboard messaging, and preserve loopback Control UI auth on reruns and explicit local gateway URLs so local quickstart flows recover cleanly. (#55730) Thanks @shakkernerd.
• TUI/chat log: keep system messages as single logical entries and prune overflow at whole-message boundaries so wrapped system spacing stays intact. (#55732) Thanks @shakkernerd.
• TUI/activation: validate /activation arguments in the TUI and reject invalid values instead of silently coercing them to mention. (#55733) Thanks @shakkernerd.
• Agents/model switching: apply /model changes to active embedded runs at the next safe retry boundary, so overloaded or retrying turns switch to the newly selected model instead of staying pinned to the old provider.
• Agents/Codex fallback: classify Codex server_error payloads as failoverable, sanitize Codex error: payloads before they reach chat, preserve context-overflow guidance for prefixed invalid_request_error payloads, and omit provider request_id values from user-facing UI copy. (#42892) Thanks @xaeon2026.
• Memory/search: share memory embedding provider registrations across split plugin runtimes so memory search no longer fails with unknown provider errors after memory-core registers built-in adapters. (#55945) Thanks @glitch418x.
• Discord/Carbon beta: update @buape/carbon to the latest beta and pass the new RateLimitError request argument so Discord stays compatible with the upstream beta constructor change. (#55980) Thanks @ngutman.
• Plugins/inbound claims: pass full inbound attachment arrays through inbound_claim hook metadata while keeping the legacy singular media attachment fields for compatibility. (#55452) Thanks @huntharo.
• Plugins/Matrix: preserve sender filenames for inbound media by forwarding originalFilename to saveMediaBuffer. (#55692) thanks @esrehmki.
• Matrix/mentions: recognize matrix.to mentions whose visible label uses the bot's room display name, so requireMention: true rooms respond correctly in modern Matrix clients. (#55393) thanks @nickludlam.
• Ollama/thinking off: route thinkingLevel=off through the live Ollama extension request path so thinking-capable Ollama models now receive top-level think: false instead of silently generating hidden reasoning tokens. (#53200) Thanks @BruceMacD.
• Plugins/diffs: stage bundled @pierre/diffs runtime dependencies during packaged updates so the bundled diff viewer keeps loading after global installs and updates. (#56077) Thanks @gumadeiras.
• Plugins/diffs: load bundled Pierre themes without JSON module imports so diff rendering keeps working on newer Node builds. (#45869) thanks @NickHood1984.
• Plugins/uninstall: remove owned channels.<id> config when uninstalling channel plugins, and keep the uninstall preview aligned with explicit channel ownership so built-in channels and shared keys stay intact. (#35915) Thanks @wbxl2000.
• Plugins/Matrix: prefer explicit DM signals when choosing outbound direct rooms and routing unmapped verification summaries, so strict 2-person fallback rooms do not outrank the real DM. (#56076) thanks @gumadeiras
• Plugins/Matrix: resolve env-backed accessToken and password SecretRefs against the active Matrix config env path during startup, and officially accept SecretRef accessToken config values. (#54980) thanks @kakahu2015.
• Microsoft Teams/proactive DMs: prefer the freshest personal conversation reference for user:<aadObjectId> sends when multiple stored references exist, so replies stop targeting stale DM threads. (#54702) Thanks @gumclaw.
• Gateway/plugins: reuse the session workspace when building HTTP /tools/invoke tool lists and harden tool construction to infer the session agent workspace by default, so workspace plugins do not re-register on repeated HTTP tool calls. (#56101) thanks @neeravmakwana
• Brave/web search: normalize unsupported Brave country filters to ALL before request and cache-key generation so locale-derived values like VN stop failing with upstream 422 validation errors. (#55695) Thanks @chen-zhang-cs-code.
• Discord/replies: preserve leading indentation when stripping inline reply tags so reply-tagged plain text and fenced code blocks keep their formatting. (#55960) Thanks @Nanako0129.
• Daemon/status: surface immediate gateway close reasons from lightweight probes and prefer those concrete auth or pairing failures over generic timeouts in openclaw daemon status. (#56282) Thanks @mbelinky.
• Agents/failover: classify HTTP 410 errors as retryable timeouts by default while still preserving explicit session-expired, billing, and auth signals from the payload. (#55201) thanks @nikus-pan.
• Agents/subagents: restore completion announce delivery for extension channels like BlueBubbles. (#56348)
• Plugins/Matrix: load bundled @matrix-org/matrix-sdk-crypto-nodejs through createRequire(...) so E2EE media send and receive keep the package-local native binding lookup working in packaged ESM builds. (#54566) thanks @joelnishanth.
• Plugins/Matrix: encrypt E2EE image thumbnails with thumbnail_file while keeping unencrypted-room previews on thumbnail_url, so encrypted Matrix image events keep thumbnail metadata without leaking plaintext previews. (#54711) thanks @frischeDaten.
• Telegram/forum topics: keep native /new and /reset routed to the active topic by preserving the topic target on forum-thread command context. (#35963)

openclaw 2026.3.24

Breaking

Changes

• Gateway/OpenAI compatibility: add /v1/models and /v1/embeddings, and forward explicit model overrides through /v1/chat/completions and /v1/responses for broader client and RAG compatibility. Thanks @vincentkoc.
• Agents/tools: make /tools show the tools the current agent can actually use right now, add a compact default view with an optional detailed mode, and add a live "Available Right Now" section in the Control UI so it is easier to see what will work before you ask.
• Microsoft Teams: migrate to the official Teams SDK and add AI-agent UX best practices including streaming 1:1 replies, welcome cards with prompt starters, feedback/reflection, informative status updates, typing indicators, and native AI labeling. (#51808)
• Microsoft Teams: add message edit and delete support for sent messages, including in-thread fallbacks when no explicit target is provided. (#49925)
• Skills/install metadata: add one-click install recipes to bundled skills (coding-agent, gh-issues, openai-whisper-api, session-logs, tmux, trello, weather) so the CLI and Control UI can offer dependency installation when requirements are missing. (#53411) Thanks @BunsDev.
• Control UI/skills: add status-filter tabs (All / Ready / Needs Setup / Disabled) with counts, replace inline skill cards with a click-to-detail dialog showing requirements, toggle switch, install action, API key entry, source metadata, and homepage link. (#53411) Thanks @BunsDev.
• Slack/interactive replies: restore rich reply parity for direct deliveries, auto-render simple trailing Options: lines as buttons/selects, improve Slack interactive setup defaults, and isolate reply controls from plugin interactive handlers. (#53389) Thanks @vincentkoc.
• CLI/containers: add --container and OPENCLAW_CONTAINER to run openclaw commands inside a running Docker or Podman OpenClaw container. (#52651) Thanks @sallyom.
• Discord/auto threads: add optional autoThreadName: "generated" naming so new auto-created threads can be renamed asynchronously with concise LLM-generated titles while keeping the existing message-based naming as the default. (#43366) Thanks @davidguttman.
• Plugins/hooks: add before_dispatch with canonical inbound metadata and route handled replies through the normal final-delivery path, preserving TTS and routed delivery semantics. (#50444) Thanks @gfzhx.
• Control UI/agents: convert agent workspace file rows to expandable <details> with lazy-loaded inline markdown preview, and add comprehensive .sidebar-markdown styles for headings, lists, code blocks, tables, blockquotes, and details/summary elements. (#53411) Thanks @BunsDev.
• Control UI/markdown preview: restyle the agent workspace file preview dialog with a frosted backdrop, sized panel, and styled header, and integrate @create-markdown/preview v2 system theme for rich markdown rendering (headings, tables, code blocks, callouts, blockquotes) that auto-adapts to the app's light/dark design tokens. (#53411) Thanks @BunsDev.
• macOS app/config: replace horizontal pill-based subsection navigation with a collapsible tree sidebar using disclosure chevrons and indented subsection rows. (#53411) Thanks @BunsDev.
• CLI/skills: soften missing-requirements label from "missing" to "needs setup" and surface API key setup guidance (where to get a key, CLI save command, storage path) in openclaw skills info output. (#53411) Thanks @BunsDev.
• macOS app/skills: add "Get your key" homepage link and storage-path hint to the API key editor dialog, and show the config path in save confirmation messages. (#53411) Thanks @BunsDev.
• Control UI/agents: add a "Not set" placeholder to the default agent model selector dropdown. (#53411) Thanks @BunsDev.
• Runtime/install: lower the supported Node 22 floor to 22.14+ while continuing to recommend Node 24, so npm installs and self-updates do not strand Node 22.14 users on older releases.
• CLI/update: preflight the target npm package engines.node before openclaw update runs a global package install, so outdated Node runtimes fail with a clear upgrade message instead of attempting an unsupported latest release.

Fixes

• Outbound media/local files: align outbound media access with the configured fs policy so host-local files and inbound-media paths keep sending when workspaceOnly is off, while strict workspace-only agents remain sandboxed.
• Security/sandbox media dispatch: close the mediaUrl/fileUrl alias bypass so outbound tool and message actions cannot escape media-root restrictions. (#54034)
• Gateway/restart sentinel: wake the interrupted agent session via heartbeat after restart instead of only sending a best-effort restart note, retry outbound delivery once on transient failure, and preserve explicit thread/topic routing through the wake path so replies land in the correct Telegram topic or Slack thread. (#53940) Thanks @VACInc.
• Docker/setup: avoid the pre-start openclaw-cli shared-network namespace loop by routing setup-time onboard/config writes through openclaw-gateway, so fresh Docker installs stop failing before the gateway comes up. (#53385) Thanks @amsminn.
• Gateway/channels: keep channel startup sequential while isolating per-channel boot failures, so one broken channel no longer blocks later channels from starting. (#54215) Thanks @JonathanJing.
• Embedded runs/secrets: stop unresolved SecretRef config from crashing embedded agent runs by falling back to the resolved runtime snapshot when needed. Fixes #45838.
• WhatsApp/groups: track recent gateway-sent message IDs and suppress only matching group echoes, preserving owner /status, /new, and /activation commands from linked-account fromMe traffic. (#53624) Thanks @w-sss.
• WhatsApp/reply-to-bot detection: restore implicit group reply detection by unwrapping botInvokeMessage payloads and reading selfLid from creds.json, so reply-based mentions reach the bot again in linked-account group chats.
• Telegram/forum topics: recover #General topic 1 routing when Telegram omits forum metadata, including native commands, interactive callbacks, inbound message context, and fallback error replies. (#53699) thanks @huntharo
• Discord/gateway supervision: centralize gateway error handling behind a lifetime-owned supervisor so early, active, and late-teardown Carbon gateway errors stay classified consistently and stop surfacing as process-killing teardown crashes.
• Discord/timeouts: send a visible timeout reply when the inbound Discord worker times out before a final reply starts, including created auto-thread targets and queued-run ordering. (#53823) Thanks @Kimbo7870.
• ACP/direct chats: always deliver a terminal ACP result when final TTS does not yield audio, even if block text already streamed earlier, and skip redundant empty-text final synthesis. (#53692) Thanks @w-sss.
• Telegram/outbound errors: preserve actionable 403 membership/block/kick details and treat bot not a member as a permanent delivery failure so Telegram sends stop retrying doomed chats. (#53635) Thanks @w-sss.
• Telegram/photos: preflight Telegram photo dimension and aspect-ratio rules, and fall back to document sends when image metadata is invalid or unavailable so photo uploads stop failing with PHOTO_INVALID_DIMENSIONS. (#52545) Thanks @hnshah.
• Slack/runtime defaults: trim Slack DM reply overhead, restore Codex auto transport, and tighten Slack/web-search runtime defaults around DM preview threading, cache scoping, warning dedupe, and explicit web-search opt-in. (#53957) Thanks @vincentkoc.

2026.3.23

Breaking

Changes

• ModelStudio/Qwen: add standard (pay-as-you-go) DashScope endpoints for China and global Qwen API keys alongside the existing Coding Plan endpoints, and relabel the provider group to Qwen (Alibaba Cloud Model Studio). (#43878)
• UI/clarity: consolidate button primitives (btn--icon, btn--ghost, btn--xs), refine the Knot theme to a black-and-red palette with WCAG 2.1 AA contrast, add config icons for Diagnostics/CLI/Secrets/ACP/MCP sections, replace the roundness slider with discrete stops, and improve accessibility with aria-labels across usage filters. (#53272) Thanks @BunsDev.
• CSP/Control UI: compute SHA-256 hashes for inline <script> blocks in the served index.html and include them in the script-src CSP directive, keeping inline scripts blocked by default while allowing explicitly hashed bootstrap code. (#53307) Thanks @BunsDev.

Fixes

• Plugins/bundled runtimes: ship bundled plugin runtime sidecars like WhatsApp light-runtime-api.js, Matrix runtime-api.js, and other plugin runtime entry files in the npm package again, so global installs stop failing on missing bundled plugin runtime surfaces.
• CLI/channel auth: auto-select the single configured login-capable channel for channels login/logout, harden channel ids against prototype-chain and control-character abuse, and fall back cleanly to catalog-backed channel installs, so channel auth works again for single-channel setups and on-demand channel installs. (#53254) Thanks @BunsDev.
• Auth/OpenAI tokens: stop live gateway auth-profile writes from reverting freshly saved credentials back to stale in-memory values, and make models auth paste-token write to the resolved agent store, so Configure, Onboard, and token-paste flows stop snapping back to expired OpenAI tokens. Fixes #53207. Related to #45516.
• Control UI/auth: preserve operator scopes through the device-auth bypass path, ignore cached under-scoped operator tokens, and show a clear operator.read fallback message when a connection really lacks read scope, so operator sessions stop failing or blanking on read-backed pages. (#53110) Thanks @BunsDev.
• Plugins/ClawHub: resolve plugin API compatibility against the active runtime version at install time, and add regression coverage for current >=2026.3.22 ClawHub package checks so installs no longer fail behind the stale 1.2.0 constant. (#53157) Thanks @futhgar.
• Plugins/uninstall: accept installed clawhub: specs and versionless ClawHub package names as uninstall targets, so openclaw plugins uninstall clawhub:<package> works again even when the recorded install was pinned to a version.
• Browser/Chrome MCP: wait for existing-session browser tabs to become usable after attach instead of treating the initial Chrome MCP handshake as ready, which reduces user-profile timeouts and repeated consent churn on macOS Chrome attach flows. Fixes #52930. Thanks @vincentkoc.
• Browser/CDP: reuse an already-running loopback browser after a short initial reachability miss instead of immediately falling back to relaunch detection, which fixes second-run browser start/open regressions on slower headless Linux setups. Fixes #53004. Thanks @vincentkoc.
• Agents/web_search: use the active runtime web_search provider instead of stale/default selection, so agent turns keep hitting the provider you actually configured. Fixes #53020. Thanks @jzakirov.
• Mistral/models: lower bundled Mistral max-token defaults to safe output budgets and teach openclaw doctor --fix to repair old persisted Mistral provider configs that still carry context-sized output limits, avoiding deterministic Mistral 422 rejects on fresh and existing setups. Fixes #52599. Thanks @vincentkoc.
• ClawHub/macOS auth: honor macOS auth config and XDG auth paths for saved ClawHub credentials, so openclaw skills ... and gateway skill browsing keep using the signed-in auth state instead of silently falling back to unauthenticated mode. Fixes #53034.
• ClawHub/macOS: read the local ClawHub login from the macOS Application Support path and still honor XDG config on macOS, so skill browsing uses the logged-in token on both default and XDG-style setups. Fixes #52949. Thanks @scoootscooob.
• ClawHub/skills: resolve the local ClawHub auth token for gateway skill browsing and switch browse-all requests to search so ClawControl stops falling into unauthenticated 429s and empty authenticated skill lists. Fixes #52949. Thanks @vincentkoc.

---

This is an automated version bump. Only the Dockerfile was changed.
If release notes mention config/schema changes, manual review is required.
Do not merge if there are known regressions above.

Docker test output

=== OpenClaw Upgrade Verification ===

Waiting for container openclaw-upgrade-test to be ready...
✓ Container is responsive (waiting for init to complete...)
✓ s6 init complete (crond up)
✓ Version: 2026.3.28
✓ Config is valid JSON
✓ tools.profile: coding
✓ Config owned by openclaw
✓ Auth mode: token
✓ Gateway process running
✓ Tailscale binary present
Waiting for gateway HTTP...
✓ Gateway HTTP: 200
✓ Config writable by openclaw user
✓ Channel plugins loaded: discord,signal,telegram,whatsapp
✓ Backup config (backup.yaml) is valid
✓ pnpm store excluded from backups
SKIP: Telegram channel probe (TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN not set)
✓ openclaw doctor completes

=== Upgrade Verification Results ===
  Passed:   13
  Failed:   0
  Warnings: 0

=== All upgrade verification tests passed ✅ ===