OpenClaw 2026.1.12 — What Shipped (Operator Guide)

This post covers what shipped in v2026.1.12 and what it means for OpenClaw VPS operators.

What shipped

Highlights

• BREAKING: rename chat “providers” (Slack/Telegram/WhatsApp/…) to channels across CLI/RPC/config; legacy config keys auto-migrate on load (and are written back as channels.*).
• Memory: add vector search for agent memories (Markdown-only) with SQLite index, chunking, lazy sync + file watch, and per-agent enablement/fallback.
• Plugins: restore full voice-call plugin parity (Telnyx/Twilio, streaming, inbound policies, tools/CLI).
• Models: add Synthetic provider plus Moonshot Kimi K2 0905 + turbo/thinking variants (with docs). (#811) — thanks @siraht; (#818) — thanks @mickahouan.
• Cron: one-shot schedules accept ISO timestamps (UTC) with optional delete-after-run; cron jobs can target a specific agent (CLI + macOS/Control UI).
• Agents: add compaction mode config with optional safeguard summarization and per-agent model fallbacks. (#700) — thanks @thewilloftheshadow; (#583) — thanks @mitschabaude-bot.

New & Improved

• Memory: add custom OpenAI-compatible embedding endpoints; support OpenAI/local node-llama-cpp embeddings with per-agent overrides and provider metadata in tools/CLI. (#819) — thanks @mukhtharcm.
• Memory: new clawdbot memory CLI plus memorysearch/memoryget tools with snippets + line ranges; index stored under ~/.clawdbot/memory/{agentId}.sqlite with watch-on-by-default.
• Agents: strengthen memory recall guidance; make workspace bootstrap truncation configurable (default 20k) with warnings; add default sub-agent model config.
• Tools/Sandbox: add tool profiles + group shorthands; support tool-policy groups in tools.sandbox.tools; drop legacy memory shorthand; allow Docker bind mounts via docker.binds. (#790) — thanks @akonyer.
• Tools: add browser scrollintoview action; allow Claude/Gemini tool param aliases; allow thinking xhigh for GPT-5.2/Codex with safe downgrades. (#793) — thanks @hsrvc; (#444) — thanks @grp06.
• Gateway/CLI: add Tailscale binary discovery, custom bind mode, and probe auth retry; add clawdbot dashboard auto-open flow; default native slash commands to "auto" with per-provider overrides. (#740) — thanks @jeffersonwarrior.
• Auth/Onboarding: add Chutes OAuth (PKCE + refresh + onboarding choice); normalize API key inputs; default TUI onboarding to deliver: false. (#726) — thanks @FrieSei; (#791) — thanks @roshanasingh4.
• Providers: add discord.allowBots; trim legacy MiniMax M2 from default catalogs; route MiniMax vision to the Coding Plan VLM endpoint (also accepts @/path/to/file.png inputs). (#802) — thanks @zknicker.
• Gateway: allow Tailscale Serve identity headers to satisfy token auth; rebuild Control UI assets when protocol schema is newer. (#823) — thanks @roshanasingh4; (#786) — thanks @meaningfool.
• Heartbeat: default ackMaxChars to 300 so short HEARTBEAT_OK replies stay internal.

Installer

• Install: run clawdbot doctor --non-interactive after git installs/updates and nudge daemon restarts when detected.

Fixes

• Doctor: warn on pnpm workspace mismatches, missing Control UI assets, and missing tsx binaries; offer UI rebuilds.
• Models/Providers: treat credential validation failures as auth errors to trigger fallback; normalize ${ENV_VAR} apiKey values and auto-fill missing provider keys; preserve explicit GitHub Copilot provider config + agent-dir auth profiles. (#822) — thanks @sebslight; (#705) — thanks @TAGOOZ.
• Auth: drop invalid auth profiles from ordering so environment keys can still be used for providers like MiniMax.
• Gemini: normalize Gemini 3 ids to preview variants; strip Gemini CLI tool call/response ids; downgrade missing thoughtsignature; strip Claude msg* thought_signature fields to avoid base64 decode errors. (#795) — thanks @thewilloftheshadow; (#783) — thanks @ananth-vardhan-cn; (#793) — thanks @hsrvc; (#805) — thanks @marcmarg.
• Agents: auto-recover from compaction context overflow by resetting the session and retrying; propagate overflow details from embedded runs so callers can recover.
• MiniMax: strip malformed tool invocation XML; include MiniMax-VL-01 in implicit provider for image pairing. (#809) — thanks @latitudeki5223.
• Onboarding/Auth: honor CLAWDBOTAGENTDIR / PICODINGAGENT_DIR when writing auth profiles (MiniMax). (#829) — thanks @roshanasingh4.
• Anthropic: handle overloaded_error with a friendly message and failover classification. (#832) — thanks @danielz1z.
• Anthropic: merge consecutive user turns (preserve newest metadata) before validation to avoid incorrect role errors. (#804) — thanks @ThomsenDrake.
• Messaging: enforce context isolation for message tool sends; keep typing indicators alive during tool execution. (#793) — thanks @hsrvc; (#450, #447) — thanks @thewilloftheshadow.
• Auto-reply: /status allowlist behavior, reasoning-tag enforcement on fallback, and system-event enqueueing for elevated/reasoning toggles. (#810) — thanks @mcinteerj.
• System events: include local timestamps when events are injected into prompts. (#245) — thanks @thewilloftheshadow.
• Auto-reply: resolve ambiguous /model matches; fix streaming block reply media handling; keep >300 char heartbeat replies instead of dropping.
• Discord/Slack: centralize reply-thread planning; fix autoThread routing + add per-channel autoThread; avoid duplicate listeners; keep reasoning italics intact; allow clearing channel parents via message tool. (#800, #807) — thanks @davidguttman; (#744) — thanks @thewilloftheshadow.
• Telegram: preserve forum topic thread ids, persist polling offsets, respect account bindings in webhook mode, and show typing indicator in General topics. (#727, #739) — thanks @thewilloftheshadow; (#821) — thanks @gumadeiras; (#779) — thanks @azade-c.
• Slack: accept slash commands with or without leading / for custom command configs. (#798) — thanks @thewilloftheshadow.
• Cron: persist disabled jobs correctly; accept jobId aliases for update/run/remove params. (#205, #252) — thanks @thewilloftheshadow.
• Gateway/CLI: honor CLAWDBOTLAUNCHDLABEL / CLAWDBOTSYSTEMDUNIT overrides; agents.list respects explicit config; reduce noisy loopback WS logs during tests; run clawdbot doctor --non-interactive during updates. (#781) — thanks @ronyrus.
• Onboarding/Control UI: refuse invalid configs (run doctor first); quote Windows browser URLs for OAuth; keep chat scroll position unless the user is near the bottom. (#764) — thanks @mukhtharcm; (#794) — thanks @roshanasingh4; (#217) — thanks @thewilloftheshadow.
• Tools/UI: harden tool input schemas for strict providers; drop null-only union variants for Gemini schema cleanup; treat maxChars: 0 as unlimited; keep TUI last streamed response instead of "(no output)". (#782) — thanks @AbhisekBasu1; (#796) — thanks @gabriel-trigo; (#747) — thanks @thewilloftheshadow.
• Connections UI: polish multi-account account cards. (#816) — thanks @steipete.

Maintenance

• Dependencies: bump Pi packages to 0.45.3 and refresh patched pi-ai.
• Testing: update Vitest + browser-playwright to 4.0.17.
• Docs: add Amazon Bedrock provider notes and link from models/FAQ.

What matters for hosted operators

• Validate channel delivery behavior (web chat + Telegram).
• Verify model/provider settings and fallback behavior.
• Run a smoke test after deploy: message flow, tool call, and response quality.

Post-upgrade checklist

1. Send/receive test messages in active channels.
2. Confirm bot settings and auth paths still behave as expected.
3. Check billing/usage visibility and dashboard status.
4. Log regressions immediately and keep rollback notes.

Related reading

• OpenClaw Release Notes Hub (2026)
• Best OpenClaw Hosting in 2026
• Pricing · Why OpenClaw VPS · FAQ

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Source

• https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/releases/tag/v2026.1.12