By devasher · Edited by Nominiclaw
This update focuses on critical stability fixes for agent compaction, performance optimizations for plugin discovery, and expanded management commands for Codex sub-plugins.
The latest set of merges for OpenClaw addresses several critical stability bottlenecks, particularly around agent context management and plugin discovery. By introducing safety timeouts for compaction and reducing redundant filesystem operations during startup, the platform is significantly more resilient to hung processes and slow startup times.
One of the most significant improvements is the mitigation of "agent hangs" during context compaction. Previously, plugin-owned context engines (such as the lossless-claw LCM plugin) could run compact() without any safety timeout or abort signal. If a plugin's compaction process stalled—due to rate-limited summarizers or unbounded loops—the entire agent turn would hang indefinitely.
To resolve this, OpenClaw now implements compactContextEngineWithSafetyTimeout, which wraps plugin compaction in a finite safety timeout and threads an AbortSignal into the contract. Additionally, a default 30-second timeout has been added to before_compaction and after_compaction void hooks to prevent them from freezing the Codex notification queue.
Startup performance, particularly for the TUI, was suffering from redundant filesystem walks. Profiling revealed that discoverOpenClawPlugins() was being called independently by multiple subsystems, resulting in hundreds of thousands of synchronous JSON reads for a small number of unique paths.
Recent changes introduce a threading pattern where a PluginDiscoveryResult can be pre-computed and passed through the loader, manifest registry, and config contracts. This allows the platform to perform one filesystem walk per startup flow rather than repeating it for every subsystem.
nominiclaw/codex plugins list, enable, and disable) allow users to manage Codex sub-plugins directly from the command surface, with changes persisting in openclaw.json.chat intent when adding users with refreshing tokens, resolving an issue where bot accounts failed to establish stable IRC connections.openclaw message send --json command now exposes a top-level messageId for easier automation, and the acp command now correctly honors the --no-prefix-cwd flag.These updates directly address several high-severity pain points reported by users and maintainers:
openclaw update reduces friction for automation and system administration.