Guide

OpenClaw v2026.5.4-beta.2: Plugins/migration, upgrade notes

May 5, 20265 min readUpdated September 11, 2026By OpenClawBlog Team

v2026.5.4-beta.2 arrived on 2026-05-05 with a change that matters during maintenance: plugins/migration. The page is a researched reading note from the official release record, with a test path for a real Gateway.

The tag is pre-release: keep it isolated from a production Gateway and compare it with the stable line before making it a default. Support still depends on the provider, channel, platform, and account behind the installation, so check those boundaries before extrapolating from the tag.

Channel
Pre-Release

Primary signals
Google Meet/Voice Call; Plugins/migration; OpenAI/Codex media

Publication date
2026-05-05

Before the package changes

Google Meet/Voice Call

Evidence from the release. make Twilio dial-in joins speak through the realtime Gemini voice bridge with paced audio streaming, backpressure-aware buffering, barge-in queue clearing, and no TwiML fallback during realtime speech, giving Meet participants a much snappier OpenClaw voice agent.

Operator reading. A catalog label for Google Meet/Voice Call is only the first signal. Confirm the account, endpoint, context limit, and tool policy that the running Gateway actually selected.

Plugins/migration

Evidence from the release. emit catalog-backed install hints when plugins.entries or plugins.allow references an official external plugin that is not installed, so upgraded configs point operators to openclaw plugins install <spec> instead of telling them to remove valid plugin config.

Operator reading. The maintainer check for Plugins/migration is a complete package review: identify the entry point, requested access, dependency tree, and uninstall behavior before publishing or upgrading.

OpenAI/Codex media

Evidence from the release. advertise Codex audio transcription in runtime and manifest metadata and route active Codex chat models to the OpenAI transcription default instead of sending chat model ids to audio transcription.

Operator reading. OpenAI/Codex media changes a capability choice, not automatically a billing or privacy agreement. Record provider, model id, context setting, and fallback behavior before changing a default.

Dependencies

Evidence from the release. refresh runtime and provider packages including Pi 0.73.0, ACPX adapters, OpenAI, Anthropic, Slack, and TypeScript native preview, while keeping the Bedrock runtime installer override pinned below the Windows ARM Node 24 npm resolver failure.

Operator reading. Use Dependencies 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.

Details behind the headline

Infra/Windows

skip the POSIX /tmp/openclaw preferred path on Windows in resolvePreferredOpenClawTmpDir so log files, TTS temp files, and other writes land in %TEMP%\openclaw-<uid> instead of C:\tmp\openclaw. Fixes #60713.

The visible promise in Infra/Windows needs a continuity check. Use non-sensitive data, refresh midway, and confirm that the same work remains attached to the right session.

Media/Windows

open saved attachment temp files read/write before fsync so Windows WebChat and chat.send media offloads no longer fail with EPERM during durability flush.

The visible promise in Media/Windows needs a continuity check. Use non-sensitive data, refresh midway, and confirm that the same work remains attached to the right session.

Test this release without widening the boundary

Note the current version, host, provider, and workspace before exercising Google Meet/Voice Call.
Keep a tested backup beside the release record if the update can touch configuration, sessions, or a database.
Send one harmless message through the named account and save the account, thread, and sender identifiers.
Compare the transcript before and after reconnect, including delivery state and any visible error.
Stop if the observed behavior falls outside the official note, and link the log or screenshot to the version record.

openclaw --version
openclaw gateway status
openclaw models

Record what the release actually changed

Keep the version, source URL, test identity, and rollback decision together. If this tag is pre-release, leave it isolated; if it is stable, record the migration and rollback result before reconnecting every channel.

Corrections worth replaying

Infra/Windows. skip the POSIX /tmp/openclaw preferred path on Windows in resolvePreferredOpenClawTmpDir so log files, TTS temp files, and other writes land in %TEMP%\openclaw-<uid> instead of C:\tmp\openclaw. Fixes #60713. Keep the reproduction and the post-fix result together in the acceptance record.

Media/Windows. open saved attachment temp files read/write before fsync so Windows WebChat and chat.send media offloads no longer fail with EPERM during durability flush. Record the failure that this correction addresses before declaring the upgrade complete.

Use the complete OpenClaw v2026.5.4-beta.2 release notes for the exact change list, then cross-check the official release index and the model provider reference before acting.