OpenClaw v2026.6.8-beta.1: Richer channel delivery, recovery notes

v2026.6.8-beta.1 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 / Richer channel delivery

Source signal. Telegram and WhatsApp are less brittle: Telegram renders structured text with tables, lists, expandable blockquotes, preserved intentional line breaks, and CLI-backed replies, while WhatsApp now honors configured ACP bindings.

For Richer channel delivery, 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 / More reliable agent runs

Source signal. account-scoped DM sends, generated media completions, auto-reply message-tool final replies, reset archive fallback reads, restart shutdown aborts, yielded subagent pauses, and session identity prompts all stay on the correct recovery path.

More reliable agent runs lives at the handoff between the Gateway and a conversation. Send one harmless message, reconnect once, and compare the account, thread, sender, and final transcript.

03 / Safer model routing

Source signal. new GLM-5.2 and Claude Haiku 4.5 catalog support arrives with normalized provider IDs, managed SecretRef auth, bounded model browsing, and safer OpenAI/Anthropic tool-schema recovery.

Treat Safer model routing as a boundary change. Exercise one permitted request and one refused request with a test identity, then keep both decisions in the log.

04 / Useful usage footers

Source signal. /usage and reply payload hooks now have a native full footer renderer, default template, fixed-decimal formatting, credential-aware limits, better partial-count handling, and warnings for broken templates instead of silent bad output.

Read Useful usage footers as an authorization checkpoint: prove who may act, what the action can reach, and how the rejected attempt is surfaced to the operator.

The limits of the recovery promise

Predictable web search defaults

key-free providers such as Parallel Free, DuckDuckGo, Ollama, and Codex Hosted Search remain explicit opt-ins rather than surprising automatic fallbacks.

A catalog label for Predictable web search defaults is only the first signal. Confirm the account, endpoint, context limit, and tool policy that the running Gateway actually selected.

Providers/models

add GLM-5.2 support and Claude Haiku 4.5 catalog entries while keeping provider-qualified model IDs normalized across OpenRouter and Google Vertex paths.

Check Providers/models with a known prompt and a disposable account. Save the selected route, reasoning setting, latency, and refusal or fallback result so another operator can reproduce it.

Web search

keep key-free providers such as Parallel Free, DuckDuckGo, Ollama, and Codex Hosted Search as explicit opt-ins instead of selecting them automatically when no API-backed provider is configured.

Check Web search with a known prompt and a disposable account. Save the selected route, reasoning setting, latency, and refusal or fallback result so another operator can reproduce it.

Run the smallest useful rehearsal

1. Write down the baseline for Richer channel delivery, 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

Channels and delivery. preserve account-scoped DM channel send policy, intentional rich-message line breaks in Telegram and status output, rich Telegram final replies, rich Telegram tables and lists, Telegram thread-create CLI remapping, Feishu dynamic-agent routes after persisted binding reuse, Slack outbound message_sent hooks, contributed message-tool schema optionality, same-channel generated media completions, and channel chunking around surrogate pairs and Infinity limits. This is the edge case to include in a regression check, especially when the release is pre-release.

Gemini CLI. use the selected OpenClaw OAuth/API-key auth profile in an isolated Gemini CLI runtime home, preventing ambient Google machine credentials from overriding the chosen profile. Treat the fix as a boundary condition and retain the source wording beside your local result.

Keep the full v2026.6.8-beta.1 notes with your test result. Read the official release index for neighboring versions and the model provider reference for configuration limits.