OpenClaw v2026.4.29-beta.1: Messaging and automation get active-run steering by, provider notes

v2026.4.29-beta.1 changes how an agent selects, calls, or remembers a provider. The official record describes a provider, model, voice, or context change; the useful test is a small request with the provider boundary recorded.

Because this is a pre-release, use a disposable Gateway first and leave the stable version available for comparison. The release body cannot certify every local combination of provider, channel, platform, and account; use the bounded test below for the path you actually run.

Provider and model consequences

Messaging and automation get active-run steering by

What changed. Messaging and automation get active-run steering by default, visible-reply enforcement, spawned subagent routing metadata, and opt-in follow-up commitments for heartbeat-delivered reminders.

Check it with. Use Messaging and automation get active-run steering by as a routing test: capture the destination before the send, interrupt the transport, and verify that retry logic did not duplicate or redirect the response.

Memory grows into a people-aware wiki with provenance

What changed. Memory grows into a people-aware wiki with provenance views, per-conversation Active Memory filters, partial recall on timeout, and bounded REM preview diagnostics.

Check it with. The privacy boundary around Memory grows into a people-aware wiki with provenance is visible in the negative case. Seed two disposable conversations, ask for each one separately, and confirm that neither crosses its owner or workspace.

Provider/model coverage expands with NVIDIA

What changed. Provider/model coverage expands with NVIDIA onboarding/catalogs plus faster manifest-backed model/auth paths, Bedrock Opus 4.7 thinking parity, and safer Codex/OpenAI-compatible replay and streaming behavior.

Check it with. Treat Provider/model coverage expands with NVIDIA as a boundary change. Exercise one permitted request and one refused request with a test identity, then keep both decisions in the log.

Gateway and packaged-plugin reliability focuses

What changed. Gateway and packaged-plugin reliability focuses on slow-host startup, reusable model catalogs, event-loop readiness diagnostics, runtime-dependency repair, stale-session recovery, and version-scoped update caches.

Check it with. A catalog label for Gateway and packaged-plugin reliability focuses is only the first signal. Confirm the account, endpoint, context limit, and tool policy that the running Gateway actually selected.

What changes outside the chat box

Channel fixes cluster around Slack Block Kit limits

Channel fixes cluster around Slack Block Kit limits, Telegram proxy/webhook/polling/send resilience, Discord startup/rate-limit handling, WhatsApp delivery/liveness, and Microsoft Teams/Matrix/Feishu edge cases.

The operator question around Channel fixes cluster around Slack Block Kit limits is where the reply lands after a restart. Record the conversation identifiers before testing and compare them after the channel is healthy again.

Agents/commitments

add opt-in inferred follow-up commitments with hidden batched extraction, per-agent/per-channel scoping, heartbeat delivery, CLI management, a simple commitments.enabled/commitments.maxPerDay config, and heartbeat-interval due-time clamping so magical check-ins do not echo immediately.

Use Agents/commitments as a routing test: capture the destination before the send, interrupt the transport, and verify that retry logic did not duplicate or redirect the response.

Messages/queue

make steer drain all pending Pi steering messages at the next model boundary, keep legacy one-at-a-time steering as queue, and add a dedicated steering queue docs page.

The operator question around Messages/queue is where the reply lands after a restart. Record the conversation identifiers before testing and compare them after the channel is healthy again.

A bounded check for this version

1. Start with a disposable checkpoint: record the version, host, provider, and workspace tied to Messaging and automation get active-run steering by.
2. Check the release's migration notes and make a restorable backup before changing persistent state.
3. Use a disposable conversation for one send, one reconnect, and one retry; keep the destination identifiers with the result.
4. Leave the channel disabled after the test if its credentials or pairing were created only for this rehearsal.
5. If the result differs from the release body, stop the rollout and attach the log, screenshot, or transcript to the version record.

openclaw --version
openclaw gateway status
openclaw security audit

Close the loop with evidence

A useful maintenance record names the changed behavior, the behavior that stayed stable, the identity that approved the test, and the step that would undo it. Preserve that record beside the release tag.

Edge cases in this tag

Security/outbound. strip re-formed HTML tags during plain-text sanitization so nested tag fragments cannot leave a CodeQL-detected <script> sequence behind. Record the failure that this correction addresses before declaring the upgrade complete.

Security/secrets. compare credential bytes with padded timing-safe buffers instead of hashing candidate passwords before equality checks. This is the edge case to include in a regression check, especially when the release is pre-release.

The authoritative record is the v2026.4.29-beta.1 GitHub release. The release index gives the surrounding sequence, while the session concepts supplies the operational background.