OpenClaw 2026.3.11 — What Shipped (Operator Guide)

This post covers what shipped in v2026.3.11 and what it means for OpenClaw VPS operators.

What shipped

Security

• Gateway/WebSocket: enforce browser origin validation for all browser-originated connections regardless of whether proxy headers are present, closing a cross-site WebSocket hijacking path in trusted-proxy mode that could grant untrusted origins operator.admin access. (GHSA-5wcw-8jjv-m286)

Changes

• OpenRouter/models: add temporary Hunter Alpha and Healer Alpha entries to the built-in catalog so OpenRouter users can try the new free stealth models during their roughly one-week availability window. (#43642) Thanks @ping-Toven.
• iOS/Home canvas: add a bundled welcome screen with a live agent overview that refreshes on connect, reconnect, and foreground return, and move the compact connection pill off the top-left canvas overlay. (#42456) Thanks @ngutman.
• iOS/Home canvas: replace floating controls with a docked toolbar, make the bundled home scaffold adapt to smaller phones, and open chat in the resolved main session instead of a synthetic ios session. (#42456) Thanks @ngutman.
• macOS/chat UI: add a chat model picker, persist explicit thinking-level selections across relaunch, and harden provider-aware session model sync for the shared chat composer. (#42314) Thanks @ImLukeF.
• Onboarding/Ollama: add first-class Ollama setup with Local or Cloud + Local modes, browser-based cloud sign-in, curated model suggestions, and cloud-model handling that skips unnecessary local pulls. (#41529) Thanks @BruceMacD.
• OpenCode/onboarding: add new OpenCode Go provider, treat Zen and Go as one OpenCode setup in the wizard/docs while keeping the runtime providers split, store one shared OpenCode key for both profiles, and stop overriding the built-in opencode-go catalog routing. (#42313) Thanks @ImLukeF and @vincentkoc.
• Memory: add opt-in multimodal image and audio indexing for memorySearch.extraPaths with Gemini gemini-embedding-2-preview, strict fallback gating, and scope-based reindexing. (#43460) Thanks @gumadeiras.
• Memory/Gemini: add gemini-embedding-2-preview memory-search support with configurable output dimensions and automatic reindexing when the configured dimensions change. (#42501) Thanks @BillChirico and @gumadeiras.
• macOS/onboarding: detect when remote gateways need a shared auth token, explain where to find it on the gateway host, and clarify when a successful check used paired-device auth instead. (#43100) Thanks @ngutman.
• Discord/auto threads: add autoArchiveDuration channel config for auto-created threads so Discord thread archiving can stay at 1 hour, 1 day, 3 days, or 1 week instead of always using the 1-hour default. (#35065) Thanks @davidguttman.
• iOS/TestFlight: add a local beta release flow with Fastlane prepare/archive/upload support, canonical beta bundle IDs, and watch-app archive fixes. (#42991) Thanks @ngutman.
• ACP/sessions_spawn: add optional resumeSessionId for runtime: "acp" so spawned ACP sessions can resume an existing ACPX/Codex conversation instead of always starting fresh. (#41847) Thanks @pejmanjohn.
• Gateway/node pending work: add narrow in-memory pending-work queue primitives (node.pending.enqueue / node.pending.drain) and wake-helper reuse as a foundation for dormant-node work delivery. (#41409) Thanks @mbelinky.
• Git/runtime state: ignore the gateway-generated .dev-state file so local runtime state does not show up as untracked repo noise. (#41848) Thanks @smysle.
• Exec/child commands: mark child command environments with OPENCLAW_CLI so subprocesses can detect when they were launched from the OpenClaw CLI. (#41411) Thanks @vincentkoc.

Breaking

• Cron/doctor: tighten isolated cron delivery so cron jobs can no longer notify through ad hoc agent sends or fallback main-session summaries, and add openclaw doctor --fix migration for legacy cron storage and legacy notify/webhook delivery metadata. (#40998) Thanks @mbelinky.

Fixes

• Agents/text sanitization: strip leaked model control tokens (<|...|> and full-width <｜...｜> variants) from user-facing assistant text, preventing GLM-5 and DeepSeek internal delimiters from reaching end users. (#42173) Thanks @imwyvern.
• iOS/gateway foreground recovery: reconnect immediately on foreground return after stale background sockets are torn down, so the app no longer stays disconnected until a later wake path happens. (#41384) Thanks @mbelinky.
• Gateway/Control UI: keep dashboard auth tokens in session-scoped browser storage so same-tab refreshes preserve remote token auth without restoring long-lived localStorage token persistence, while scoping tokens to the selected gateway URL and fragment-only bootstrap flow. (#40892) thanks @velvet-shark.
• Gateway/macOS launchd restarts: keep the LaunchAgent registered during explicit restarts, hand off self-restarts through a detached launchd helper, and recover config/hot reload restart paths without unloading the service. Fixes #43311, #43406, #43035, and #43049.
• macOS/LaunchAgent install: tighten LaunchAgent directory and plist permissions during install so launchd bootstrap does not fail when the target home path or generated plist inherited group/world-writable modes.
• Discord/reply chunking: resolve the effective maxLinesPerMessage config across live reply paths and preserve chunkMode in the fast send path so long Discord replies no longer split unexpectedly at the default 17-line limit. (#40133) thanks @rbutera.
• Feishu/local image auto-convert: pass mediaLocalRoots through the sendText local-image shim so allowed local image paths upload as Feishu images again instead of falling back to raw path text. (#40623) Thanks @ayanesakura.
• Models/Kimi Coding: send anthropic-messages tools in native Anthropic format again so kimi-coding stops degrading tool calls into XML/plain-text pseudo invocations instead of real tool_use blocks. (#38669, #39907, #40552) Thanks @opriz.
• Telegram/outbound HTML sends: chunk long HTML-mode messages, preserve plain-text fallback and silent-delivery params across retries, and cut over to plain text when HTML chunk planning cannot safely preserve the full message. (#42240) thanks @obviyus.
• Telegram/final preview delivery: split active preview lifecycle from cleanup retention so missing archived preview edits avoid duplicate fallback sends without clearing the live preview or blocking later in-place finalization. (#41662) thanks @hougangdev.
• Telegram/final preview delivery followup: keep ambiguous missing-message_id finals only when a preview was already visible, while first-preview/no-id cases still fall back so Telegram users do not lose the final reply. (#41932) thanks @hougangdev.
• Telegram/final preview cleanup follow-up: clear stale cleanup-retain state only for transient preview finals so archived-preview retains no longer leave a stale partial bubble beside a later fallback-sent final. (#41763) Thanks @obviyus.
• Gateway/auth: allow one trusted device-token retry on shared-token mismatch with recovery hints to prevent reconnect churn during token drift. (#42507) Thanks @joshavant.
• Gateway/config errors: surface up to three validation issues in top-level config.set, config.patch, and config.apply error messages while preserving structured issue details. (#42664) Thanks @huntharo.
• Agents/Azure OpenAI Responses: include the azure-openai provider in the Responses API store override so Azure OpenAI multi-turn cron jobs and embedded agent runs no longer fail with HTTP 400 "store is set to false". (#42934, fixes #42800) Thanks @ademczuk.
• Agents/error rendering: ignore stale assistant errorMessage fields on successful turns so background/tool-side failures no longer prepend synthetic billing errors over valid replies. (#40616) Thanks @ingyukoh.
• Agents/billing recovery: probe single-provider billing cooldowns on the existing throttle so topping up credits can recover without a manual gateway restart. (#41422) thanks @altaywtf.
• Agents/fallback: treat HTTP 499 responses as transient in both raw-text and structured failover paths so Anthropic-style client-closed overload responses trigger model fallback reliably. (#41468) thanks @zeroasterisk.
• Agents/fallback: recognize Venice 402 Insufficient USD or Diem balance billing errors so configured model fallbacks trigger instead of surfacing the raw provider error. (#43205) Thanks @Squabble9.
• Agents/fallback: recognize Poe 402 You've used up your points! billing errors so configured model fallbacks trigger instead of surfacing the raw provider error. (#42278) Thanks @CryUshio.
• Agents/failover: treat Gemini MALFORMED_RESPONSE stop reasons as retryable timeouts so preview-model enum drift falls back cleanly instead of crashing the run, without also reclassifying malformed function-call errors. (#42292) Thanks @jnMetaCode.
• Agents/cooldowns: default cooldown windows with no recorded failure history to unknown instead of rate_limit, avoiding false API rate-limit warnings while preserving cooldown recovery probes. (#42911) Thanks @VibhorGautam.
• Auth/cooldowns: reset expired auth-profile cooldown error counters before computing the next backoff so stale on-disk counters do not re-escalate into long cooldown loops after expiry. (#41028) thanks @zerone0x.
• Agents/memory flush: forward memoryFlushWritePath through runEmbeddedPiAgent so memory-triggered flush turns keep the append-only write guard without aborting before tool setup. Follows up on #38574. (#41761) Thanks @frankekn.
• Agents/context pruning: prune image-only tool results during soft-trim, align context-pruning coverage with the new tool-result contract, and extend historical image cleanup to the same screenshot-heavy session path. (#43045) Thanks @MoerAI.
• Sessions/reset model recompute: clear stale runtime model, context-token, and system-prompt metadata before session resets recompute the replacement session, so resets pick up current defaults and explicit overrides instead of reusing old runtime model state. (#41173) thanks @PonyX-lab.
• Channels/allowlists: remove stale matcher caching so same-array allowlist edits and wildcard replacements take effect immediately, with regression coverage for in-place mutation cases.
• Discord/Telegram outbound runtime config: thread runtime-resolved config through Discord and Telegram send paths so SecretRef-based credentials stay resolved during message delivery. (#42352) Thanks @joshavant.
• Tools/web search: treat Brave llm-context grounding snippets as plain strings so web_search no longer returns empty snippet arrays in LLM Context mode. (#41387) thanks @zheliu2.
• Tools/web search: recover OpenRouter Perplexity citation extraction from message.annotations when chat-completions responses omit top-level citations. (#40881) Thanks @laurieluo.
• CLI/skills JSON: strip ANSI and C1 control bytes from skills list --json, skills info --json, and skills check --json so machine-readable output stays valid for terminals and skill metadata with embedded control characters. Fixes #27530. Related #27557. Thanks @Jimmy-xuzimo and @vincentkoc.
• CLI/tables: default shared tables to ASCII borders on legacy Windows consoles while keeping Unicode borders on modern Windows terminals, so commands like openclaw skills stop rendering mojibake under GBK/936 consoles. Fixes #40853. Related #41015. Thanks @ApacheBin and @vincentkoc.
• CLI/memory teardown: close cached memory search/index managers in the one-shot CLI shutdown path so watcher-backed memory caches no longer keep completed CLI runs alive after output finishes. (#40389) thanks @Julbarth.
• Control UI/Sessions: restore single-column session table collapse on narrow viewport or container widths by moving the responsive table override next to the base grid rule and enabling inline-size container queries. (#12175) Thanks @benjipeng.
• Telegram/network env-proxy: apply configured transport policy to proxied HTTPS dispatchers as well as direct NO_PROXY bypasses, so resolver-scoped IPv4 fallback and network settings work consistently for env-proxied Telegram traffic. (#40740) Thanks @sircrumpet.
• Mattermost/Markdown formatting: preserve first-line indentation when stripping bot mentions so nested list items and indented code blocks keep their structure, and render Mattermost tables natively by default instead of fenced-code fallback. (#18655) thanks @echo931.
• Mattermost/plugin send actions: normalize direct replyTo fallback handling so threaded plugin sends trim blank IDs and reuse the correct reply target again. (#41176) Thanks @hnykda.
• MS Teams/allowlist resolution: use the General channel conversation ID as the resolved team key (with Graph GUID fallback) so Bot Framework runtime channelData.team.id matching works for team and team/channel allowlist entries. (#41838) Thanks @BradGroux.
• Signal/config schema: accept channels.signal.accountUuid in strict config validation so loop-protection configs no longer fail with an unrecognized-key error. (#35578) Thanks @ingyukoh.
• Telegram/config schema: accept channels.telegram.actions.editMessage and createForumTopic in strict config validation so existing Telegram action toggles no longer fail as unrecognized keys. (#35498) Thanks @ingyukoh.
• Telegram/docs: clarify that channels.telegram.groups allowlists chats while groupAllowFrom allowlists users inside those chats, and point invalid negative chat IDs at the right config key. (#42451) Thanks @altaywtf.
• Discord/config typing: expose channel-level autoThread on the canonical guild-channel config type so strict config loading matches the existing Discord schema and runtime behavior. (#35608) Thanks @ingyukoh.
• fix(models): guard optional model.input capability checks (#42096) thanks @andyliu
• Models/Alibaba Cloud Model Studio: wire MODELSTUDIOAPIKEY through shared env auth, implicit provider discovery, and shell-env fallback so onboarding works outside the wizard too. (#40634) Thanks @pomelo-nwu.
• Resolve web tool SecretRefs atomically at runtime. (#41599) Thanks @joshavant.
• Secret files: harden CLI and channel credential file reads against path-swap races by requiring direct regular files for *File secret inputs and rejecting symlink-backed secret files.
• Archive extraction: harden TAR and external tar.bz2 installs against destination symlink and pre-existing child-symlink escapes by extracting into staging first and merging into the canonical destination with safe file opens.
• Secrets/SecretRef: reject exec SecretRef traversal ids across schema, runtime, and gateway. (#42370) Thanks @joshavant.
• Sandbox/fs bridge: pin staged writes to verified parent directories so temporary write files cannot materialize outside the allowed mount before atomic replace. Thanks @tdjackey.
• Gateway/auth: fail closed when local gateway.auth. SecretRefs are configured but unavailable, instead of silently falling back to gateway.remote. credentials in local mode. (#42672) Thanks @joshavant.
• Commands/config writes: enforce configWrites against both the originating account and the targeted account scope for /config and config-backed /allowlist edits, blocking sibling-account mutations while preserving gateway operator.admin flows. Thanks @tdjackey for reporting.
• Security/system.run: fail closed for approval-backed interpreter/runtime commands when OpenClaw cannot bind exactly one concrete local file operand, while extending best-effort direct-file binding to additional runtime forms. Thanks @tdjackey for reporting.
• Gateway/session reset auth: split conversation /new and /reset handling away from the admin-only sessions.reset control-plane RPC so write-scoped gateway callers can no longer reach the privileged reset path through agent. Thanks @tdjackey for reporting.
• Security/plugin runtime: stop unauthenticated plugin HTTP routes from inheriting synthetic admin gateway scopes when they call runtime.subagent.*, so admin-only methods like sessions.delete stay blocked without gateway auth.
• Security/sessionstatus: enforce sandbox session-tree visibility and shared agent-to-agent access guards before reading or mutating target session state, so sandboxed subagents can no longer inspect parent session metadata or write parent model overrides via sessionstatus.
• Security/nodes: treat the nodes agent tool as owner-only fallback policy so non-owner senders cannot reach paired-node approval or invoke paths through the shared tool set.
• Security/external content: treat whitespace-delimited EXTERNAL UNTRUSTED CONTENT boundary markers like underscore-delimited variants so prompt wrappers cannot bypass marker sanitization. (#35983) Thanks @urianpaul94.
• Telegram/exec approvals: reject /approve commands aimed at other bots, keep deterministic approval prompts visible when tool-result delivery fails, and stop resolved exact IDs from matching other pending approvals by prefix. (#37233) Thanks @huntharo.
• Subagents/authority: persist leaf vs orchestrator control scope at spawn time and route tool plus slash-command control through shared ownership checks, so leaf sessions cannot regain orchestration privileges after restore or flat-key lookups. Thanks @tdjackey.
• ACP/ACPX plugin: bump the bundled acpx pin to 0.1.16 so plugin-local installs and strict version checks match the latest published CLI. (#41975) Thanks @dutifulbob.
• ACP/sessions.patch: allow spawnedBy and spawnDepth lineage fields on ACP session keys so sessions_spawn with runtime: "acp" no longer fails during child-session setup. Fixes #40971. (#40995) thanks @xaeon2026.
• ACP/stop reason mapping: resolve gateway chat state: "error" completions as ACP end_turn instead of refusal so transient backend failures are not surfaced as deliberate refusals. (#41187) thanks @pejmanjohn.
• ACP/setSessionMode: propagate gateway sessions.patch failures back to ACP clients so rejected mode changes no longer return silent success. (#41185) thanks @pejmanjohn.
• ACP/bridge mode: reject unsupported per-session MCP server setup and propagate rejected session-mode changes so IDE clients see explicit bridge limitations instead of silent success. (#41424) Thanks @mbelinky.
• ACP/session UX: replay stored user and assistant text on loadSession, expose Gateway-backed session controls and metadata, and emit approximate session usage updates so IDE clients restore context more faithfully. (#41425) Thanks @mbelinky.
• ACP/tool streaming: enrich toolcall and toolcall_update events with best-effort text content and file-location hints so IDE clients can follow bridge tool activity more naturally. (#41442) Thanks @mbelinky.
• ACP/runtime attachments: forward normalized inbound image attachments into ACP runtime turns so ACPX sessions can preserve image prompt content on the runtime path. (#41427) Thanks @mbelinky.
• ACP/regressions: add gateway RPC coverage for ACP lineage patching, ACPX runtime coverage for image prompt serialization, and an operator smoke-test procedure for live ACP spawn verification. (#41456) Thanks @mbelinky.
• ACP/follow-up hardening: make session restore and prompt completion degrade gracefully on transcript/update failures, enforce bounded tool-location traversal, and skip non-image ACPX turns the runtime cannot serialize. (#41464) Thanks @mbelinky.
• ACP/sessions_spawn: implicitly stream mode="run" ACP spawns to parent only for eligible subagent orchestrator sessions (heartbeat target: "last" with a usable session-local route), restoring parent progress relays without thread binding. (#42404) Thanks @davidguttman.
• ACP/main session aliases: canonicalize main before ACP session lookup so restarted ACP main sessions rehydrate instead of failing closed with Session is not ACP-enabled: main. (#43285, fixes #25692)
• Plugins/context-engine model auth: expose runtime.modelAuth and plugin-sdk auth helpers so plugins can resolve provider/model API keys through the normal auth pipeline. (#41090) thanks @xinhuagu.
• Hooks/plugin context parity followup: pass trigger and channelId through embedded llminput, agentend, and llm_output hook contexts so plugins receive the same agent metadata across hook phases. (#42362) Thanks @zhoulf1006.
• Plugins/global hook runner: harden singleton state handling so shared global hook runner reuse does not leak or corrupt runner state across executions. (#40184) Thanks @vincentkoc.
• Context engine/tests: add bundled-registry regression coverage for cross-chunk resolution, plugin-sdk re-exports, and concurrent chunk registration. (#40460) thanks @dsantoreis.
• Agents/embedded runner: bound compaction retry waiting and drain embedded runs during SIGUSR1 restart so session lanes recover instead of staying blocked behind compaction. (#40324) thanks @cgdusek.
• Agents/embedded logs: add structured, sanitized lifecycle and failover observation events so overload and provider failures are easier to tail and filter. (#41336) thanks @altaywtf.
• Agents/embedded overload logs: include the failing model and provider in error-path console output, with lifecycle regression coverage for the rendered and sanitized consoleMessage. (#41236) thanks @jiarung.
• Agents/fallback observability: add structured, sanitized model-fallback decision and auth-profile failure-state events with correlated run IDs so cooldown probes and failover paths are easier to trace in logs. (#41337) thanks @altaywtf.
• Logging/probe observations: suppress structured embedded and model-fallback probe warnings on the console without hiding error or fatal output. (#41338) thanks @altaywtf.
• Agents/context-engine compaction: guard thrown engine-owned overflow compaction attempts and fire compaction hooks for ownsCompaction engines so overflow recovery no longer crashes and plugin subscribers still observe compact runs. (#41361) thanks @davidrudduck.
• Gateway/node pending drain followup: keep hasMore true when the deferred baseline status item still needs delivery, and avoid allocating empty pending-work state for drain-only nodes with no queued work. (#41429) Thanks @mbelinky.
• Protocol/Swift model sync: regenerate pending node work Swift bindings after the landed node.pending.* schema additions so generated protocol artifacts are consistent again. (#41477) Thanks @mbelinky.
• Cron/subagent followup: do not misclassify empty or NO_REPLY cron responses as interim acknowledgements that need a rerun, so deliberately silent cron jobs are no longer retried. (#41383) thanks @jackal092927.
• Cron/state errors: record lastErrorReason in cron job state and keep the gateway schema aligned with the full failover-reason set, including regression coverage for protocol conformance. (#14382) thanks @futuremind2026.
• Browser/Browserbase 429 handling: surface stable no-retry rate-limit guidance without buffering discarded HTTP 429 response bodies from remote browser services. (#40491) thanks @mvanhorn.
• CI/CodeQL Swift toolchain: select Xcode 26.1 before installing Swift build tools so the CodeQL Swift job uses Swift tools 6.2 on macos-latest. (#41787) thanks @BunsDev.
• Sandbox/subagents: pass the real configured workspace through sessions_spawn inheritance when a parent agent runs in a copied-workspace sandbox, so child /agent mounts point at the configured workspace instead of the parent sandbox copy. (#40757) Thanks @dsantoreis.
• Agents/fallback cooldown probing: cap cooldown-bypass probing to one attempt per provider per fallback run so multi-model same-provider cooldown chains can continue to cross-provider fallbacks instead of repeatedly stalling on duplicate cooldown probes. (#41711) Thanks @cgdusek.
• Telegram/direct delivery: bridge direct delivery sends to internal message:sent hooks so internal hook listeners observe successful Telegram deliveries. (#40185) Thanks @vincentkoc.
• Dependencies: refresh workspace dependencies except the pinned Carbon package, and harden ACP session-config writes against non-string SDK values so newer ACP clients fail fast instead of tripping type/runtime mismatches.
• Telegram/polling restarts: clear bounded cleanup timeout handles after runner.stop() and bot.stop() settle so stall recovery no longer leaves stray 15-second timers behind on clean shutdown. (#43188) thanks @kyohwang.

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/v2026.3.11