Security

OpenClaw v2026.8.1: Follow work as it happens, upgrade notes

August 31, 20265 min readUpdated September 11, 2026By OpenClawBlog Team

v2026.8.1 arrived on 2026-08-31 with a change that matters during maintenance: follow work as it happens. The page is a researched reading note from the official release record, with a test path for a real Gateway.

This is a stable release line; read the exact record for migrations and fixes before applying it to a live Gateway. 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.

Channel
Stable

Primary signals
Find past conversations; Sessions beyond your Gateway; Follow work as it happens

Publication date
2026-08-31

Before the package changes

Find past conversations

Evidence from the release. search visible conversation text by exact words or phrases and reopen the surrounding messages from a matching result.

Operator reading. Use Find past conversations 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.

Sessions beyond your Gateway

Evidence from the release. run work on paired devices or cloud workers, move the session workspace with it, and reuse warm machines and project seeds for later cloud sessions.

Operator reading. Keep Sessions beyond your Gateway inside a test workspace until you can inspect its ledger, next run, failure state, and cancellation behavior from the operator surface.

Follow work as it happens

Evidence from the release. keep a durable session progress card through reloads and follow subagent activity and accumulating edits across web and native chat.

Operator reading. Measure Follow work as it happens 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.

Answer clearly

Evidence from the release. respond to structured agent questions through web and native cards, messaging buttons, or plain text, with free-text alternatives and an explicit Skip path.

Operator reading. Measure Answer clearly before and after the update with synthetic data, and explain every accepted finding in the release record.

Details behind the headline

Interactive results and dashboards

use widgets in chat, pin them to session dashboards, grant specific actions or network origins, and export rendered views as images.

Test Interactive results and dashboards at the edges of the interface: clean start, reload, reconnect, and a refused or unavailable action. Keep the final screen and error message with the release note.

OpenProse migration (breaking)

remove the bundled OpenProse plugin and /prose command; run openclaw doctor --fix to clean stale configuration and follow the upstream Agent Skill migration, keeping existing .prose source files.

Keep discovery separate from permission for OpenProse migration (breaking). Review the manifest, source, dependencies, and removal path in a disposable workspace before enabling it.

OpenAI route migration (breaking)

use openclaw doctor --fix to migrate shipped codex/* and openai-codex/* model refs, provider config, stored sessions, and automation routes to openai/*, retaining Codex runtime intent and flagging conflicts for operator repair.

The safe reading of OpenAI route migration (breaking) is operational: prove the model can answer the intended task, then force a bounded failure and verify that no side effect is repeated.

A bounded check for this version

Start with a disposable checkpoint: record the version, host, provider, and workspace tied to Find past conversations.
Check the release's migration notes and make a restorable backup before changing persistent state.
Use a disposable conversation for one send, one reconnect, and one retry; keep the destination identifiers with the result.
Leave the channel disabled after the test if its credentials or pairing were created only for this rehearsal.
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

Paired-device deadline outcomes. surface unavailable paired devices consistently while waiting for reconnection, and preserve launch-timeout or explicit cancellation outcomes when they take precedence. Record the failure that this correction addresses before declaring the upgrade complete.

Offline desktop workers. report worker-offline consistently when a paired desktop disconnects in Computer Use preparation. This is the edge case to include in a regression check, especially when the release is pre-release.

The authoritative record is the v2026.8.1 GitHub release. The release index gives the surrounding sequence, while the Gateway security guide supplies the operational background.