OpenClaw v2026.5.16-beta.2 Release Summary

Key Changes

Core Infrastructure & Automation

• Cron Automation Enhancements: Introduced openclaw cron run --wait with configurable timeout and poll intervals. This allows automation scripts to block until a specific manual run reaches a terminal status. Additionally, cron.runs now supports exact run-id filtering for precise tracking.
• Gateway Lifecycle: Raised default timeout budgets for lifecycle hooks to 5 seconds for shutdown and 10 seconds for pre-restart, ensuring notification handlers have sufficient time to complete before the process terminates.
• Security Hardening: Decoupled system event authority from prompt text. Queued system events now render as plain System: lines, while owner/non-owner status is carried as structured metadata, preventing trust markers from being spoofed or confused with content.
• Performance Optimization: Implemented caching for hydrated resolvedSkills across warm gateway turns. This reduces redundant skill snapshot rebuilds while maintaining strict config-gated skill boundaries.

Codex & MCP Integration

• Context Engine Binding: Codex app-server now supports thread-bootstrap projection epochs. This allows context engines (like Lossless Claw) to own the compacted context projected into Codex, starting new backend threads only when the projection epoch or runtime policy changes.
• Tool Policy Enforcement: Fixed a security bypass where Codex-native shell and file operations could ignore OpenClaw's before_tool_call policy. Native tool requests are now routed through the OpenClaw policy engine before execution.
• MCP Server Scoping: User MCP servers can now be scoped to specific OpenClaw agent IDs via mcp.servers.<name>.codex.agents, preventing global tool exposure where not intended.
• Stability Fixes: Resolved an issue where Codex notification handlers synchronously blocked the Node event loop, causing gateway unresponsiveness during account or MCP status updates.

Channel & Provider Updates

• Telegram Improvements:
  • Added messages.groupChat.ambientTurns: "room_event" handling, allowing always-on ambient chatter to run as quiet room context and only speak visibly via the message tool.
  • Fixed a critical bug where expired approval callbacks caused infinite retry loops, blocking all incoming DMs.
  • Resolved context loss after gateway restarts by implementing durable on-disk processing claims for isolated ingress.
• Feishu CardKit: Fixed a rendering bug where streaming updates appended full accumulated text instead of replacing it, which previously caused severe text duplication.
• Slack Enhancements:
  • Outbound link unfurling is now disabled by default to reduce noise in channels.
  • Fixed a bug where tool warnings could overwrite finalized assistant drafts during streaming.
• Provider Support:
  • xAI: Added Grok OAuth login for SuperGrok subscribers, removing the need for XAI_API_KEY for xai/* models.
  • Xiaomi MiMo: Fixed issues where reasoning-only completions appeared blank and multi-turn tool calls failed due to missing reasoning_content in assistant messages.
  • OpenRouter: Fixed HTTP 500 errors occurring after tool calls when using DeepSeek V4 by stripping empty-string reasoning placeholders.

Impact

This release significantly improves the reliability of high-throughput agent deployments. The fixes to the Telegram ingress spool and Codex event loop prevent the "hard wedges" that previously required manual process kills. Security is notably tighter for Codex users, as native tools are now subject to the same plugin-based policies as dynamic tools. For developers using MCP, the forwarding of AbortSignal ensures that cancelled tool calls actually stop executing in the plugin, preventing resource leaks.

Upgrade Guide

Breaking Changes & Migration

• Codex Plugin Configuration: If you are upgrading from a version where agents.defaults.agentRuntime was used, note that this is now legacy. You should move your runtime policy to a model-scoped or provider-scoped configuration. Use openclaw doctor --fix to automatically repair configs where OpenAI/Codex-runtime routes are missing the required plugin enablement.
• Official Plugin Migration: For users migrating from stock to externalized plugins (e.g., Brave, Slack), openclaw doctor --fix has been updated to repair source-only installs by replacing them with official npm packages from trusted catalog metadata.
• CLI Localization: The setup wizard now supports English, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese. You can set your preferred locale using the OPENCLAW_LOCALE environment variable.