OpenClaw 2026.2.13 — What Shipped (Operator Guide)

This post covers what shipped in v2026.2.13 and what it means for OpenClaw VPS operators.

What shipped

Changes

• Discord: send voice messages with waveform previews from local audio files (including silent delivery). (#7253) Thanks @nyanjou.
• Discord: add configurable presence status/activity/type/url (custom status defaults to activity text). (#10855) Thanks @h0tp-ftw.
• Slack/Plugins: add thread-ownership outbound gating via message_sending hooks, including @-mention bypass tracking and Slack outbound hook wiring for cancel/modify behavior. (#15775) Thanks @DarlingtonDeveloper.
• Agents: add synthetic catalog support for hf:zai-org/GLM-5. (#15867) Thanks @battman21.
• Skills: remove duplicate local-places Google Places skill/proxy and keep goplaces as the single supported Google Places path.
• Agents: add pre-prompt context diagnostics (messages, systemPromptChars, promptChars, provider/model, session file) before embedded runner prompt calls to improve overflow debugging. (#8930) Thanks @Glucksberg.
• Onboarding/Providers: add first-class Hugging Face Inference provider support (provider wiring, onboarding auth choice/API key flow, and default-model selection), and preserve Hugging Face auth intent in auth-choice remapping (tokenProvider=huggingface with authChoice=apiKey) while skipping env-override prompts when an explicit token is provided. (#13472) Thanks @Josephrp.

Fixes

• Outbound: add a write-ahead delivery queue with crash-recovery retries to prevent lost outbound messages after gateway restarts. (#15636) Thanks @nabbilkhan, @thewilloftheshadow.
• Auto-reply/Threading: auto-inject implicit reply threading so replyToMode works without requiring model-emitted [[replytocurrent]], while preserving replyToMode: "off" behavior for implicit Slack replies and keeping block-streaming chunk coalescing stable under replyToMode: "first". (#14976) Thanks @Diaspar4u.
• Outbound/Threading: pass replyTo and threadId from message send tool actions through the core outbound send path to channel adapters, preserving thread/reply routing. (#14948) Thanks @mcaxtr.
• Auto-reply/Media: allow image-only inbound messages (no caption) to reach the agent instead of short-circuiting as empty text, and preserve thread context in queued/followup prompt bodies for media-only runs. (#11916) Thanks @arosstale.
• Discord: route autoThread replies to existing threads instead of the root channel. (#8302) Thanks @gavinbmoore, @thewilloftheshadow.
• Web UI: add img to DOMPurify allowed tags and src/alt to allowed attributes so markdown images render in webchat instead of being stripped. (#15437) Thanks @lailoo.
• Telegram/Matrix: treat MP3 and M4A (including audio/mp4) as voice-compatible for asVoice routing, and keep WAV/AAC falling back to regular audio sends. (#15438) Thanks @azade-c.
• WhatsApp: preserve outbound document filenames for web-session document sends instead of always sending "file". (#15594) Thanks @TsekaLuk.
• Telegram: cap bot menu registration to Telegram's 100-command limit with an overflow warning while keeping typed hidden commands available. (#15844) Thanks @battman21.
• Telegram: scope skill commands to the resolved agent for default accounts so setMyCommands no longer triggers BOTCOMMANDSTOO_MUCH when multiple agents are configured. (#15599)
• Discord: avoid misrouting numeric guild allowlist entries to /channels/<guildId> by prefixing guild-only inputs with guild: during resolution. (#12326) Thanks @headswim.
• MS Teams: preserve parsed mention entities/text when appending OneDrive fallback file links, and accept broader real-world Teams mention ID formats (29:..., 8:orgid:...) while still rejecting placeholder patterns. (#15436) Thanks @hyojin.
• Media: classify text/* MIME types as documents in media-kind routing so text attachments are no longer treated as unknown. (#12237) Thanks @arosstale.
• Inbound/Web UI: preserve literal `

sequences when normalizing inbound text so Windows paths like C:\Work\nxxx\README.md` are not corrupted. (#11547) Thanks @mcaxtr.

• TUI/Streaming: preserve richer streamed assistant text when final payload drops pre-tool-call text blocks, while keeping non-empty final payload authoritative for plain-text updates. (#15452) Thanks @TsekaLuk.
• Providers/MiniMax: switch implicit MiniMax API-key provider from openai-completions to anthropic-messages with the correct Anthropic-compatible base URL, fixing invalid role: developer (2013) errors on MiniMax M2.5. (#15275) Thanks @lailoo.
• Ollama/Agents: use resolved model/provider base URLs for native /api/chat streaming (including aliased providers), normalize /v1 endpoints, and forward abort + maxTokens stream options for reliable cancellation and token caps. (#11853) Thanks @BrokenFinger98.
• OpenAI Codex/Spark: implement end-to-end gpt-5.3-codex-spark support across fallback/thinking/model resolution and models list forward-compat visibility. (#14990, #15174) Thanks @L-U-C-K-Y, @loiie45e.
• Agents/Codex: allow gpt-5.3-codex-spark in forward-compat fallback, live model filtering, and thinking presets, and fix model-picker recognition for spark. (#14990) Thanks @L-U-C-K-Y.
• Models/Codex: resolve configured openai-codex/gpt-5.3-codex-spark through forward-compat fallback during models list, so it is not incorrectly tagged as missing when runtime resolution succeeds. (#15174) Thanks @loiie45e.
• OpenAI Codex/Auth: bridge OpenClaw OAuth profiles into pi auth.json so model discovery and models-list registry resolution can use Codex OAuth credentials. (#15184) Thanks @loiie45e.
• Auth/OpenAI Codex: share OAuth login handling across onboarding and models auth login --provider openai-codex, keep onboarding alive when OAuth fails, and surface a direct OAuth help note instead of terminating the wizard. (#15406, follow-up to #14552) Thanks @zhiluo20.
• Onboarding/Providers: add vLLM as an onboarding provider with model discovery, auth profile wiring, and non-interactive auth-choice validation. (#12577) Thanks @gejifeng.
• Onboarding/CLI: restore terminal state without resuming paused stdin, so onboarding exits cleanly after choosing Web UI and the installer returns instead of appearing stuck.
• Signal/Install: auto-install signal-cli via Homebrew on non-x64 Linux architectures, avoiding x86_64 native binary Exec format error failures on arm64/arm hosts. (#15443) Thanks @jogvan-k.
• macOS Voice Wake: fix a crash in trigger trimming for CJK/Unicode transcripts by matching and slicing on original-string ranges instead of transformed-string indices. (#11052) Thanks @Flash-LHR.
• Mattermost (plugin): retry websocket monitor connections with exponential backoff and abort-aware teardown so transient connect failures no longer permanently stop monitoring. (#14962) Thanks @mcaxtr.
• Discord/Agents: apply channel/group historyLimit during embedded-runner history compaction to prevent long-running channel sessions from bypassing truncation and overflowing context windows. (#11224) Thanks @shadril238.
• Outbound targets: fail closed for WhatsApp/Twitch/Google Chat fallback paths so invalid or missing targets are dropped instead of rerouted, and align resolver hints with strict target requirements. (#13578) Thanks @mcaxtr.
• Gateway/Restart: clear stale command-queue and heartbeat wake runtime state after SIGUSR1 in-process restarts to prevent zombie gateway behavior where queued work stops draining. (#15195) Thanks @joeykrug.
• Heartbeat: prevent scheduler silent-death races during runner reloads, preserve retry cooldown backoff under wake bursts, and prioritize user/action wake causes over interval/retry reasons when coalescing. (#15108) Thanks @joeykrug.
• Heartbeat: allow explicit wake (wake) and hook wake (hook:*) reasons to run even when HEARTBEAT.md is effectively empty so queued system events are processed. (#14527) Thanks @arosstale.
• Auto-reply/Heartbeat: strip sentence-ending HEARTBEAT_OK tokens even when followed by up to 4 punctuation characters, while preserving surrounding sentence punctuation. (#15847) Thanks @Spacefish.
• Agents/Heartbeat: stop auto-creating HEARTBEAT.md during workspace bootstrap so missing files continue to run heartbeat as documented. (#11766) Thanks @shadril238.
• Sessions/Agents: pass agentId when resolving existing transcript paths in reply runs so non-default agents and heartbeat/chat handlers no longer fail with Session file path must be within sessions directory. (#15141) Thanks @Goldenmonstew.
• Sessions/Agents: pass agentId through status and usage transcript-resolution paths (auto-reply, gateway usage APIs, and session cost/log loaders) so non-default agents can resolve absolute session files without path-validation failures. (#15103) Thanks @jalehman.
• Sessions: archive previous transcript files on /new and /reset session resets (including gateway sessions.reset) so stale transcripts do not accumulate on disk. (#14869) Thanks @mcaxtr.
• Status/Sessions: stop clamping derived totalTokens to context-window size, keep prompt-token snapshots wired through session accounting, and surface context usage as unknown when fresh snapshot data is missing to avoid false 100% reports. (#15114) Thanks @echoVic.
• CLI/Completion: route plugin-load logs to stderr and write generated completion scripts directly to stdout to avoid source <(openclaw completion ...) corruption. (#15481) Thanks @arosstale.
• CLI: lazily load outbound provider dependencies and remove forced success-path exits so commands terminate naturally without killing intentional long-running foreground actions. (#12906) Thanks @DrCrinkle.
• Security/Gateway + ACP: block high-risk tools (sessionsspawn, sessionssend, gateway, whatsapplogin) from HTTP /tools/invoke by default with gateway.tools.{allow,deny} overrides, and harden ACP permission selection to fail closed when tool identity/options are ambiguous while supporting allowalways/reject_always. (#15390) Thanks @aether-ai-agent.
• Security/Gateway: breaking default-behavior change - canvas IP-based auth fallback now only accepts machine-scoped addresses (RFC1918, link-local, ULA IPv6, CGNAT); public-source IP matches now require bearer token auth. (#14661) Thanks @sumleo.
• Security/Link understanding: block loopback/internal host patterns and private/mapped IPv6 addresses in extracted URL handling to close SSRF bypasses in link CLI flows. (#15604) Thanks @AI-Reviewer-QS.
• Security/Browser: constrain POST /trace/stop, POST /wait/download, and POST /download output paths to OpenClaw temp roots and reject traversal/escape paths.
• Security/Canvas: serve A2UI assets via the shared safe-open path (openFileWithinRoot) to close traversal/TOCTOU gaps, with traversal and symlink regression coverage. (#10525) Thanks @abdelsfane.
• Security/WhatsApp: enforce 0o600 on creds.json and creds.json.bak on save/backup/restore paths to reduce credential file exposure. (#10529) Thanks @abdelsfane.
• Security/Gateway: sanitize and truncate untrusted WebSocket header values in pre-handshake close logs to reduce log-poisoning risk. Thanks @thewilloftheshadow.
• Security/Audit: add misconfiguration checks for sandbox Docker config with sandbox mode off, ineffective gateway.nodes.denyCommands entries, global minimal tool-profile overrides by agent profiles, and permissive extension-plugin tool reachability.
• Security/Audit: distinguish external webhooks (hooks.enabled) from internal hooks (hooks.internal.enabled) in attack-surface summaries to avoid false exposure signals when only internal hooks are enabled. (#13474) Thanks @mcaxtr.
• Security/Onboarding: clarify multi-user DM isolation remediation with explicit openclaw config set session.dmScope ... commands in security audit, doctor security, and channel onboarding guidance. (#13129) Thanks @VintLin.
• Agents/Nodes: harden node exec approval decision handling in the nodes tool run path by failing closed on unexpected approval decisions, and add regression coverage for approval-required retry/deny/timeout flows. (#4726) Thanks @rmorse.
• Android/Nodes: harden app.update by requiring HTTPS and gateway-host URL matching plus SHA-256 verification, stream URL camera downloads to disk with size guards to avoid memory spikes, and stop signing release builds with debug keys. (#13541) Thanks @smartprogrammer93.
• Routing: enforce strict binding-scope matching across peer/guild/team/roles so peer-scoped Discord/Slack bindings no longer match unrelated guild/team contexts or fallback tiers. (#15274) Thanks @lailoo.
• Exec/Allowlist: allow multiline heredoc bodies (<<, <<-) while keeping multiline non-heredoc shell commands blocked, so exec approval parsing permits heredoc input safely without allowing general newline command chaining. (#13811) Thanks @mcaxtr.
• Config: preserve ${VAR} env references when writing config files so openclaw config set/apply/patch does not persist secrets to disk. Thanks @thewilloftheshadow.
• Config: remove a cross-request env-snapshot race in config writes by carrying read-time env context into write calls per request, preserving ${VAR} refs safely under concurrent gateway config mutations. (#11560) Thanks @akoscz.
• Config: log overwrite audit entries (path, backup target, and hash transition) whenever an existing config file is replaced, improving traceability for unexpected config clobbers.
• Config: keep legacy audio transcription migration strict by rejecting non-string/unsafe command tokens while still migrating valid custom script executables. (#5042) Thanks @shayan919293.
• Config: accept $schema key in config file so JSON Schema editor tooling works without validation errors. (#14998)
• Gateway/Tools Invoke: sanitize /tools/invoke execution failures while preserving 400 for tool input errors and returning 500 for unexpected runtime failures, with regression coverage and docs updates. (#13185) Thanks @davidrudduck.
• Gateway/Hooks: preserve 408 for hook request-body timeout responses while keeping bounded auth-failure cache eviction behavior, with timeout-status regression coverage. (#15848) Thanks @AI-Reviewer-QS.
• Plugins/Hooks: fire beforetoolcall hook exactly once per tool invocation in embedded runs by removing duplicate dispatch paths while preserving parameter mutation semantics. (#15635) Thanks @lailoo.
• Agents/Transcript policy: sanitize OpenAI/Codex tool-call ids during transcript policy normalization to prevent invalid tool-call identifiers from propagating into session history. (#15279) Thanks @divisonofficer.
• Agents/Image tool: cap image-analysis completion maxTokens by model capability (min(4096, model.maxTokens)) to avoid over-limit provider failures while still preventing truncation. (#11770) Thanks @detecti1.
• Agents/Compaction: centralize exec default resolution in the shared tool factory so per-agent tools.exec overrides (host/security/ask/node and related defaults) persist across compaction retries. (#15833) Thanks @napetrov.
• Gateway/Agents: stop injecting a phantom main agent into gateway agent listings when agents.list explicitly excludes it. (#11450) Thanks @arosstale.
• Process/Exec: avoid shell execution for .exe commands on Windows so env overrides work reliably in runCommandWithTimeout. Thanks @thewilloftheshadow.
• Daemon/Windows: preserve literal backslashes in gateway.cmd command parsing so drive and UNC paths are not corrupted in runtime checks and doctor entrypoint comparisons. (#15642) Thanks @arosstale.
• Sandbox: pass configured sandbox.docker.env variables to sandbox containers at docker create time. (#15138) Thanks @stevebot-alive.
• Voice Call: route webhook runtime event handling through shared manager event logic so rejected inbound hangups are idempotent in production, with regression tests for duplicate reject events and provider-call-ID remapping parity. (#15892) Thanks @dcantu96.
• Cron: add regression coverage for announce-mode isolated jobs so runs that already report delivered: true do not enqueue duplicate main-session relays, including delivery configs where mode is omitted and defaults to announce. (#15737) Thanks @brandonwise.
• Cron: honor deleteAfterRun in isolated announce delivery by mapping it to subagent announce cleanup mode, so cron run sessions configured for deletion are removed after completion. (#15368) Thanks @arosstale.
• Web tools/web_fetch: prefer text/markdown responses for Cloudflare Markdown for Agents, add cf-markdown extraction for markdown bodies, and redact fetched URLs in x-markdown-tokens debug logs to avoid leaking raw paths/query params. (#15376) Thanks @Yaxuan42.
• Clawdock: avoid Zsh readonly variable collisions in helper scripts. (#15501) Thanks @nkelner.
• Memory: switch default local embedding model to the QAT embeddinggemma-300m-qat-Q8_0 variant for better quality at the same footprint. (#15429) Thanks @azade-c.
• Docs/Mermaid: remove hardcoded Mermaid init theme blocks from four docs diagrams so dark mode inherits readable theme defaults. (#15157) Thanks @heytulsiprasad.

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/v2026.2.13