OpenClaw v2026.4.29-beta.4: Gateway and packaged-plugin reliability focuses, recovery notes

v2026.4.29-beta.4 is easiest to understand through failure. The official record describes a provider, model, voice, or context change; the sections below spell out what to save, what to interrupt, and what must remain available afterward.

This candidate is still pre-release. Treat provider, channel, and migration behavior as unconfirmed until your own bounded test passes. Treat the version as one input to the decision. Local credentials, enabled plugins, channels, and host support still need their own evidence.

Failure and recovery path

01 / Messaging and automation get active-run steering by

Source signal. 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.

For Messaging and automation get active-run steering by, delivery is only proven when identity survives an interruption. Keep a disposable channel, send one request, and check for a single reply in the intended thread.

02 / Memory grows into a people-aware wiki with provenance

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

Measure Memory grows into a people-aware wiki with provenance after a fresh session and after a reconnect. The record should say what was retained, what was intentionally absent, and which identity requested the recall.

03 / Provider/model coverage expands with NVIDIA

Source signal. 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.

Read Provider/model coverage expands with NVIDIA as an authorization checkpoint: prove who may act, what the action can reach, and how the rejected attempt is surfaced to the operator.

04 / Gateway and packaged-plugin reliability focuses

Source signal. 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.

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.

The limits of the recovery promise

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.

For Channel fixes cluster around Slack Block Kit limits, delivery is only proven when identity survives an interruption. Keep a disposable channel, send one request, and check for a single reply in the intended thread.

Security/tools

configured tool sections (tools.exec, tools.fs) no longer implicitly widen restrictive profiles (messaging, minimal). Users who need those tools under a restricted profile must add explicit alsoAllow entries; a startup warning identifies affected configs. Fixes #47487.

Before widening access for Security/tools, replay a narrow allow and deny case. A readable denial and a revoked test credential are part of the acceptance record.

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.

Run the smallest useful rehearsal

1. Write down the baseline for Messaging and automation get active-run steering by, including the installed version, host, provider, and workspace.
2. Confirm what can be restored, then take a verified backup before applying the candidate package.
3. Exercise the affected channel with synthetic text and note the thread, sender, reaction, or attachment id that comes back.
4. Restart or reconnect the Gateway, then check for one intended reply rather than a duplicate, missing, or misrouted message.
5. Keep the experiment bounded; an unexpected result belongs in the release record before any wider rollout.

openclaw --version
openclaw gateway status
openclaw security audit

Leave a usable maintenance note

Save the command, output, source link, and environment used for this check. Future operators should be able to tell whether a difference belongs to the release or to local provider, channel, or platform state.

Fix details to carry forward

Providers/OpenAI Codex. preserve existing wrapped Codex streams during OpenAI attribution so PI OAuth bearer injection reaches ChatGPT/Codex Responses, and strip native Codex-only unsupported payload fields without touching custom compatible endpoints. This is the edge case to include in a regression check, especially when the release is pre-release.

Agents/tool-result guard. use the resolved runtime context token budget for non-context-engine tool-result overflow checks, so long tool-heavy sessions no longer compact early when contextTokens is larger than native contextWindow. Fixes #74917. Treat the fix as a boundary condition and retain the source wording beside your local result.

Keep the full v2026.4.29-beta.4 notes with your test result. Read the official release index for neighboring versions and the session concepts for configuration limits.