openclaw 2026.5.16-beta.5

openclaw 2026.5.16-beta.5

on Node.js NPM

Changes

• Mac app: redesign Settings pages with consistent card layouts, cached navigation, cleaner permissions/voice/skills/cron/exec/debug panes, and steadier spacing around the native sidebar.
• Skills: rename the repo-local Codex closeout review skill and helper to autoreview while preserving the Codex-first fallback behavior.
• Skills: add a meme-maker skill for curated template search, local SVG/PNG rendering, Imgflip hosted rendering, and Know Your Meme provenance links.
• Agents/tools: shorten built-in tool descriptions and schema hints across media, messaging, sessions, cron, Gateway, web, image/PDF, TTS, nodes, and plan tools while preserving routing guardrails.
• Skills: add node inspector debugging, fused diagram generation, and throwaway spike workflow skills.
• CLI/plugins: add defineToolPlugin plus openclaw plugins build, validate, and init for typed simple tool plugins with generated manifest metadata, optional tool declarations, and context factories.
• Agents/skills: tighten bundled skill prompts and metadata, quote skill descriptions, refresh current CLI/API guidance, and update embedded sherpa-onnx runtime downloads.
• Skills: update the Obsidian skill to target the official obsidian CLI and require its registered binary instead of the third-party obsidian-cli.
• Skills: add a Python debugging skill for pdb, breakpoint(), post-mortem inspection, and debugpy remote attach.
• Plugins/messages: add presentation capability limits for channel renderers, adapt rich message controls before native rendering, and mark legacy interactive/Slack directive producer APIs as deprecated.
• Proxy: support HTTPS managed forward-proxy endpoints and scoped proxy.tls.caFile CA trust for proxy endpoint TLS. (#79171) Thanks @jesse-merhi.
• QA-Lab: add first-hour 20-turn and optional 100-turn runtime parity scenarios, with tier metadata for standard and soak QA gates. Fixes #80338; refs #80337. Thanks @100yenadmin.
• QA-Lab: add openclaw qa suite --runtime-parity-tier and wire the standard Codex-vs-Pi tier into release checks separately from optional/live-only/soak lanes. Fixes #80337. Thanks @100yenadmin.
• QA-Lab: add a live-only Codex Pi-shaped Read vocabulary canary so runtime parity catches native workspace-read prompt compatibility drift. (#80323) Thanks @100yenadmin.
• QA-Lab: add live-only harness self-health scenarios for plugin hook crashes, manifest contract errors, and WebChat direct-reply self-message routing. (#80323) Thanks @100yenadmin.
• QA-Lab: add runtime tool fixture scenarios and coverage reporting for Codex-native workspace tools, OpenClaw dynamic tools, and optional plugin-backed tools. Fixes #80173. Thanks @100yenadmin.
• QA-Lab: expose runtime tool fixture coverage through openclaw qa coverage --tools, with optional suite-summary evaluation for parity gate artifacts. Thanks @100yenadmin.
• QA-Lab: add the personal-agent approval-denial scenario so the benchmark pack verifies denied local reads stop cleanly without tool progress or fixture leaks. (#83150) Thanks @iFiras-Max1.

Fixes

• CLI/update: tailor post-update Gateway recovery hints by platform, showing systemd, LaunchAgent, Scheduled Task, or generic service-manager guidance instead of macOS-only recovery text. (#83096) Thanks @rubencu.
• Plugins: apply a default 15-second timeout to legacy before_agent_start hooks so hung plugin handlers no longer block agent startup. Fixes #48534. (#83136) Thanks @therahul-yo.
• Feishu: refresh inbound session delivery context for DM, group, and broadcast turns so later replies do not inherit stale WebChat routing. Fixes #78274.
• QA-Lab/qa-channel: attach redacted agent tool-start traces to outbound QaBusMessage records so scenarios can assert actual tool use instead of relying only on reply text. Fixes #67637. Thanks @100yenadmin.
• QA-Lab: fail live runtime parity reports when assistant-message usage is missing, preventing 0 vs 0 live token rows from being reported as passing proof. Fixes #80411. Thanks @100yenadmin.
• QA-Lab: fail Codex-backed OpenAI live runtime-pair runs before launching isolated workers when no portable Codex auth is available, while staging API-key fallbacks and configured Codex keys for isolated QA agents. Fixes #80412. Thanks @100yenadmin.
• QA-Lab: refresh parity gates, mock frontier fixtures, model scenarios, and workflow artifact lanes to compare GPT-5.5 against Claude Opus 4.7. Fixes #74262. Thanks @100yenadmin.
• QA-Lab: make mock parity dispatch provider-aware for source discovery and subagent scenarios so OpenAI and Anthropic lanes no longer share identical canned plans. Fixes #64879. Thanks @100yenadmin.
• QA-Lab: stop returning Control UI bearer tokens from unauthenticated bootstrap payloads and bind Docker harness ports to loopback-only host addresses. (#66355) Thanks @pgondhi987.
• Mac app: avoid a SwiftUI metadata crash when rendering the Cron Jobs settings pane.
• Agents/OpenAI streams: yield via setTimeout(0) instead of setImmediate between bursty Responses chunks so abort timers can fire during the yield, keeping cancel-on-timeout responsive on hot streams. Refs #82462.
• CLI/config: send SecretRef diagnostics to stderr so JSON command stdout remains parseable.
• CLI/plugins: ship the bundled memory CLI as a package entry so package-installed openclaw memory commands register correctly.
• CLI/update: defer doctor-time plugin package installs during package swaps and seed post-core repair from the updated install registry, preventing duplicate reinstall failures.
• Feishu: detect SecretRef top-level credentials as a configured default account instead of treating object-backed app secrets as missing.
• CLI/completion: resolve concrete PowerShell profile paths and reload commands during setup and doctor completion installation. Fixes #44296. (#83059) Thanks @yu-xin-c.
• Providers/Google: preserve and recover Gemini 3 tool-call thought signatures during native replay so function-calling turns no longer fail with missing thought_signature 400s. Fixes #72879. (#80358) Thanks @abnershang.
• Memory-core: distinguish sqlite-vec load failures from missing semantic vector embeddings in degraded memory index warnings, so vector recall diagnostics point at unresolved dimensions instead of blaming sqlite-vec when the store is ready. Fixes #75624. (#83056) Thanks @xuruiray and @Noah3521.
• Agents/subagents: preserve sandbox-peer controller ownership while routing completion announcements back to the originating run session, keeping subagent control and completion delivery scoped correctly. Fixes #80201. (#80242) Thanks @Jerry-Xin.
• Gateway: continue restarting remaining channels when one hot-reload channel restart fails, while still reporting aggregate reload failure and rolling back plugin pre-replace stops. Fixes #83054. Thanks @zqchris.
• Gateway/secrets: split the lightweight secrets runtime state and auth-store cache from the full secrets runtime and take a startup fast path when the gateway startup config has no SecretRef values, speeding up secrets startup while preserving cleanup and refresh semantics.
• Codex app-server: rotate oversized native Codex threads before resume and cap dynamic tool-result text entering native Codex sessions, preventing stale oversized context from surviving OpenClaw compaction. (#82981) Thanks @hansolo949.
• Gateway/restart: drain pending replies and active chat runs during restart shutdown before sockets and channels close, aborting timed-out chat runs through the normal cleanup path. (#69121) Thanks @alexlomt.
• Agents/Codex: use the Codex runtime context window for OpenAI-model preflight compaction and memory flush checks, so GPT-5.5 Codex sessions compact before hitting the smaller native context limit. Fixes #82982. Thanks @vliuyt.
• QA-Lab: clean orphaned gateway temp roots when a suite parent exits and wait on gateway plus transport readiness after config restarts, reducing stale qa-channel noise from interrupted runs. Fixes #65506. Thanks @100yenadmin.
• QA-Lab: wake qa-bus long polls that arrive with stale future cursors after a bus restart, preserving reconnect readiness for harness clients. (#67142) Thanks @hxy91819.
• QA-Lab: stage Multipass transfer scripts under OpenClaw's preferred temp root instead of raw OS temp paths, keeping the VM runner inside temp-path guardrails. (#64098) Thanks @ImLukeF.
• Agents/replies: keep surviving reply media and append a warning when other media references fail, so partial media normalization no longer drops failures silently. Thanks @Jerry-Xin.
• Config/models: accept thinkingFormat: "together" in model compat config so Together routes can opt into the Together-specific thinking response shape.
• Plugins/tokenjuice: bump the bundled tokenjuice runtime to 0.7.1, bringing Codex hook approval compatibility, pre-tool command wrapping fixes, and Rolldown/Vitest output compaction improvements into the OpenClaw plugin.
• Agents/OpenAI: stop post-processing GPT-5 final replies with hardcoded brevity caps, preserving full channel responses instead of appending synthetic ellipses, and log when strict-agentic GPT-5 execution activates. Fixes #82910.
• Mac app: refine the Settings General and Connection panes with cleaner status panels, card rows, and a single native titlebar sidebar toggle.
• Agents/media: deliver failed async image, music, and video generation completions directly when requester-session completion handoff fails, so channel users see provider errors instead of silent fallback stalls.
• Agents/music: steer song, jingle, beat, anthem, and instrumental requests toward music_generate audio creation instead of lyric-only replies, and reserve lyrics for exact sung words.
• Codex app-server: record native Codex tool calls and results into trajectory artifacts so debug/trajectory exports capture the full Codex-native tool history, not just OpenClaw-bridged turns. Thanks @vyctorbrzezowski.
• Codex/app-server: keep bound conversation sessions on the owning agent runtime so native Codex control and follow-up turns do not fall back to the default agent client. Fixes #82954. (#82993)
• CLI/infer: run gateway model probes in fresh explicit sessions so one-shot provider checks do not inherit default agent transcript state. (#82861) Thanks @Kaspre.
• Providers/Together: send video-generation requests to Together's v2 video API even when shared text-model config still points at the v1 base URL. (#82992)
• Browser CLI: preserve browser-level options on nested commands, skip option values during lazy command registration, and keep long-running wait/download/dialog hooks open for their advertised wait window.
• CLI/sessions: accept openclaw sessions list as an alias for openclaw sessions, matching other list-style commands. Fixes #81139. (#81163) Thanks @YB0y.
• Channels/stream previews: widen compact progress draft lines and cut prose at word boundaries while preserving command/path suffixes, with streaming.progress.maxLineChars for channel-specific tuning.
• CLI/plugins: have openclaw plugins doctor warn when a configured runtime needs a missing owner plugin, sharing the same install mapping as openclaw doctor --fix. Fixes #81326. (#81674) Thanks @Zavianx.
• Agents/Codex: route OpenAI runs that resolve to openai-codex through the Codex provider and bootstrap OpenClaw's stored OAuth profile into the Codex harness when the harness owns transport, so openai/* model refs no longer fail with No API key found for openai-codex despite an existing Codex OAuth profile. (#82864) Thanks @ragesaq.
• Agents/ACP: distinguish prompt-submitted and runtime-active child stalls from true interactive waits, including redacted proxy-env diagnostics for Codex ACP no-output runs. Fixes #44810.
• Agents/memory: explain that memory-triggered compaction exposes only read and append-only write when configured core tools are unavailable in tools.allow warnings. Fixes #82941. Thanks @galiniliev.
• Agents/OpenAI: preserve deterministic tool payload ordering for prompt-cache reuse across OpenAI Responses and chat completions calls. (#82940) Thanks @galiniliev.
• ACP/Codex: honor terminal ACP turn results so failed Codex/acpx runs are not recorded as successful after only progress text. Fixes #79522. Thanks @dudaefj.
• Telegram: warn when a media group drops photos that fail to download, including albums where every photo is skipped. Fixes #55216. (#82987) Thanks @eldar702.
• Agents/skills: apply the full effective tool policy pipeline to inline command-dispatch: tool skill dispatch before owner-only filtering, preserving configured allow, deny, sandbox, sender, group, and subagent restrictions. (#78525)
• Codex: avoid spawning native hook relay subprocesses for post-tool/finalize events with no registered hook handlers while preserving pre-tool safety and approval relays. Fixes #76552. (#78004) Thanks @evgyur.
• Channel accounts: keep top-level default channel accounts visible when named accounts are added alongside default credential material, so mixed legacy/new account configs keep resolving default instead of silently dropping it.
• Codex/Telegram: synthesize native Codex tool progress from final turn snapshots so Telegram /verbose stays visible when command events arrive only at completion.
• Mac app: make Channels settings open faster by deferring config-schema work, avoiding startup channel probes, caching decoded channel status rows, and showing only compact quick settings instead of the full generated channel schema.
• Control UI: include the Control UI and Gateway protocol versions in protocol-mismatch errors so stale app/dashboard pairings identify which side needs rebuilding or restarting.
• Gateway/protocol: restore Gateway WS protocol v4 and keep message.action room-event metadata on the existing inboundTurnKind wire field while preserving internal inbound-event classification.
• Agents/tools: prefer non-webchat session-key routes when the message tool has stale webchat context, so message-tool-only replies keep delivering to the originating channel. Fixes #82911. (#83004) Thanks @joshavant.
• Channels: keep direct-message last-route writes on isolated per-channel-peer sessions instead of contaminating the agent main session with channel delivery context. Fixes #36614. Thanks @aspenas.
• Mac app: move the Settings sidebar toggle into the native titlebar and tighten the General pane width.
• Mac app: keep visited Settings panes mounted so switching tabs no longer blanks and reloads their content.
• Mac app: make Config settings open from shallow schema lookups and load selected paths on demand instead of fetching and rendering the full generated config schema up front.
• Codex: sanitize inline image payloads before Codex app-server and OpenAI Responses replay, and clear poisoned Codex thread bindings after invalid image errors. Fixes #82878.
• Providers/GitHub Copilot: request identity-encoded Copilot API responses across token exchange, catalog, model calls, usage, and embeddings so compressed Business-account error payloads no longer reach JSON parsers as gzip bytes. Fixes #82871. Thanks @tonyfe01.
• Telegram: preserve replied-to bot messages, captions, and media metadata in group reply chains so follow-up replies understand what the user is reacting to. (#82863)
• Providers/Together: update PI runtime packages to 0.74.1 and emit Together-style reasoning.enabled/max_tokens controls for reasoning-capable OpenAI-completions models.
• Agents/diagnostics: split slow embedded-run attempt-dispatch startup summaries into workspace, prompt, runtime-plan, and final dispatch subspans so traces identify the delayed setup phase. Fixes #82782. (#82783) Thanks @galiniliev.
• Agents/Codex: flatten nested tool-result middleware blocks into bounded text so successful message sends are no longer replaced with Tool output unavailable due to post-processing error. Fixes #82912. Thanks @joeykrug.
• CLI/media: accept HTTP(S) URLs in openclaw infer image describe --file, fetching remote images through the guarded media path instead of treating URLs as local files. Fixes #82837. (#82854) Thanks @neeravmakwana.
• Agents/subagents: keep session-backed parent runs active when the child wait call times out before the child session has actually settled, so late subagent completions are reconciled instead of being lost. Fixes #82787. Thanks @ramitrkar-hash.
• Control UI: advertise shared Gateway protocol constants in browser connect frames, fixing protocol mismatch handshakes after protocol constant drift. Fixes #82882. Thanks @galiniliev.
• Gateway: add rollback protocol-mismatch diagnostics, including client protocol ranges in Gateway logs and deep status/doctor hints for stale client processes. Fixes #82841. (#82908)
• Agents/subagents: keep successful keep-mode completion payloads pending after final-delivery retry exhaustion, so requester recovery no longer loses final subagent results. Fixes #82583. (#82999) Thanks @joshavant.
• Gateway/auth: allow same-host trusted-proxy callers to use the documented local direct gateway.auth.password fallback after revisiting the #78684 fail-closed policy, while keeping token fallback rejected and forwarded-header requests on the trusted-proxy path. Fixes #82607. (#82953) Thanks @joshavant.
• Agents/subagents: wait for queued completion handoffs to reach the parent transcript before marking them announced, preventing busy parent runs from cleaning up before observing child results. Fixes #82913. (#83039) Thanks @joshavant.
• Agents/subagents: route group/channel subagent completions through message-tool-only handoffs when required and keep active-requester wake failures from dropping completion delivery. Fixes #82803. Thanks @galiniliev, @yozakura-ava, and @moeedahmed.
• Memory-core: scan persisted memory source sessions on startup, comparing on-disk transcripts against the index and marking only missing/newer/resized files dirty for incremental sync. Fixes #82341. (#82341) Thanks @giodl73-repo.
• Telegram: keep the top-level default account in the account list when named accounts or bindings are added alongside top-level credentials, preserving default polling while still letting named-only configs resolve to a single account. Fixes #82794. (#82794) Thanks @giodl73-repo.
• CLI/models: reuse command-scoped plugin metadata across model listing, provider catalog, auth, and synthetic-auth checks, restoring fast openclaw models runs for plugin-heavy installs. Fixes #82881. (#83033) Thanks @joshavant.
• CLI/channels: show configured official external channels such as Discord in openclaw channels list when their plugin package is missing, including the install and doctor repair command instead of reporting no configured channels. Fixes #82813.
• Signal: preserve mixed-case group IDs through routing and session persistence so group auto-replies keep delivering after updates. Fixes #82827.
• Agents/tools: keep the message tool available in embedded runs when it is explicitly allowed through tools.alsoAllow or runtime tool allowlists, so channel plugins with custom reply delivery can still use configured message sends. Fixes #82833. Thanks @cn1313113.
• WhatsApp: honor forced document delivery for outbound image, GIF, and video media so forceDocument/asDocument sends preserve original media bytes instead of using compressed media payloads. (#79272) Thanks @itsuzef.
• WhatsApp: name outbound document attachments from their MIME type when no filename is provided, so PDF and CSV sends arrive as file.pdf and file.csv instead of an extensionless file. Thanks @mcaxtr.
• Process/diagnostics: report active lane blockers in lane wait warnings so queueAhead=0 no longer hides commands waiting behind active work. Fixes #82791. (#82792) Thanks @galiniliev.
• Process/diagnostics: stop counting the active processing turn as queued backlog in liveness warnings so transient max-only event-loop spikes do not surface as gateway warnings.
• Agents/replies: classify provider conversation-state rejections and return a clear message-channel error instead of auto-resetting or falling back to a generic runner failure. (#82616) Thanks @dutifulbob.
• Browser plugin: trust managed Chrome CDP diagnostics when launch HTTP probes race cold-start readiness, avoiding false startup failures. Fixes #82904. (#82986) Thanks @kmanan and @hclsys.
• Android: prompt before replacing a changed Gateway TLS thumbprint, showing the old and new SHA-256 fingerprints so users can accept expected certificate rotations instead of hard failing on pin mismatch. (#83077) Thanks @sliekens.
• CLI/status: render extra gateway-like service diagnostics as warning/info output instead of error output. Fixes #46930. (#82922) thanks @giodl73-repo.
• Agents/failover: classify Moonshot/Kimi exhausted-balance HTTP 429 payloads as billing instead of generic rate limits, preserving billing guidance and fallback behavior. Fixes #43447. (#83079) Thanks @leno23.
• Plugin SDK: bundle openclaw/plugin-sdk/zod into the published package artifact and verify the packed zod subpath stays self-contained, so pnpm global installs can register plugins without a package-local zod symlink. Fixes #78398. (#78515) Thanks @ggzeng.