By devasher · Edited by Nominiclaw
This release introduces a new file-transfer plugin, significantly boosts Gateway performance through lazy-loading, and enhances agent reliability across various edge cases. It also delivers crucial fixes for plugin management, channel interactions, and configuration stability, ensuring a more robust and responsive OpenClaw experience.
The OpenClaw v2026.5.3-beta.3 release brings a host of significant enhancements and critical fixes, focusing on expanding agent capabilities, improving platform performance, and bolstering overall reliability.
A major highlight is the introduction of a bundled file-transfer plugin. This new plugin equips agents with powerful tools for binary file operations on paired nodes, including file_fetch, dir_list, dir_fetch, and file_write. Security is paramount, with a default-deny per-node path policy that requires operator approval, refusal of symlink traversal (opt-in followSymlinks), and a 16 MB byte ceiling per round-trip. This opens up new possibilities for agents to interact with file systems securely and effectively.
The Gateway and Control UI hot paths have been significantly trimmed by lazy-loading plugin/runtime discovery, cron, schema, shutdown, sessions, and model metadata. This means faster startup times and a more responsive user interface. Agent runtime reliability has also seen substantial improvements, preserving streamed provider replies, delayed A2A session replies, prompt/tool delivery, memory recall, web search provider discovery, and provider-specific thinking/model metadata across common edge cases.
Official plugin installation, uninstallation, updates, onboarding, ClawHub fallback, npm dependency-state reporting, and beta-channel update paths have been hardened. Externalized plugins now behave like first-class package installs, ensuring a smoother and more secure plugin lifecycle. This includes fixes for broken macOS LaunchAgent upgrades and the repair of stale Gateway/plugin state during updates and doctor runs.
Communication channels receive several upgrades:
streaming.mode: "progress" introduces unified drafts with auto single-word status labels and shared progress configuration across Discord, Telegram, Matrix, Slack, and Microsoft Teams./steer <message> command allows for queue-independent steering of the active current-session run without initiating a new turn when the session is idle.BTW Alias: The /side command has been added as a text and native slash-command alias for /btw side questions.The doctor --fix command is now more robust, committing safe legacy migrations even when unrelated validation issues prevent full validation from passing. This ensures that agents.defaults.llm and other known-legacy keys are always cleaned up. Invalid Gateway configuration now fails closed, with openclaw doctor --fix owning the last-known-good repair, preventing unexpected behavior from bad config.
This release significantly enhances the OpenClaw platform across several dimensions, delivering a more powerful, reliable, and user-friendly experience.
For Developers and Operators:
doctor --fix is now a more effective tool for maintaining configuration health, especially in complex upgrade scenarios. The new shell command explainer lays groundwork for improved command review and approval processes.file-transfer plugin's granular policy controls, coupled with hardened plugin installs and network proxy guards, provide a stronger security foundation for agent operations.For Agents and End-Users:
/steer command offers more immediate control, allowing users to guide ongoing agent tasks without interruption.So I fixed it [the timeout], and the local LLM still act like a moron. This fix ensures that catalog-driven context windows are correctly forwarded, restoring precise tool selection and coherent responses for local models.
This release includes several changes that may require user action or awareness during the upgrade process.
openclaw doctor --fix to repair any invalid configuration after upgrading. This ensures that the system operates with a valid configuration.tools.deny Behavior for apply_patch: The behavior of tools.deny: ["write"] has changed. It no longer implicitly denies apply_patch. If your configuration relied on tools.deny: ["write"] to block apply_patch, you must now explicitly deny apply_patch or the group:fs tool group in your tools.deny list.streaming.progress configuration in your channel settings, doctor --fix will migrate it to streaming.preview.toolProgress. It is recommended to run openclaw doctor --fix after upgrading to ensure your configuration is up-to-date.messages.visibleReplies: Boolean values for messages.visibleReplies and messages.groupChat.visibleReplies will now be coerced to documented enum modes. While doctor --fix should handle this safely, reviewing your configuration after upgrade is advised.openclaw doctor --fix: This is strongly recommended for all users after upgrading. It will:
agents.defaults.llm.@openclaw/* sibling plugins overwriting each other during installation in previous versions, running openclaw plugins update --all or openclaw doctor --fix will now correctly reconcile and ensure all registered plugins are present on disk.@whiskeysockets/libsignal-node in onlyBuiltDependencies addresses an issue with pnpm v9+ blockExoticSubdeps. If you use pnpm v9+ and WhatsApp, this issue should now be resolved.