OpenClaw v2026.3.22

48-Hour Agent Timeout

Sessions no longer die mid-task — no config change needed

BEFORE

600s

10-minute hard limit
Long tasks silently killed
Lost progress, broken state
Workarounds required

timeout: 600

→

AFTER

48h

172,800 second window
Survives complex pipelines
Full multi-hour agent runs
Zero config change

timeout: 172800

Upgrade automatically — existing sessions pick up the new default on next restart

ClawHub & Plugin Ecosystem

Native skill discovery, install, and update — npm as fallback

ClawHub

Default source

→

Browse skills

→

Install

One command

→

Auto-update

Stay current

🔗 Registry

Curated skill index
Version pinning
Integrity checks

🛠 CLI

openclaw skill search
openclaw skill install
openclaw skill update

📦 Fallback

npm registry fallback
Private packages
Scoped installs

Bundled Search Tools

Exa · Tavily · Firecrawl — first-party, zero setup

Exa

Neural web search
Semantic retrieval
exa_search

Tavily

AI-optimised results
Answer extraction
tavily_search

Firecrawl

Full-page scraping
Structured extraction
firecrawl_search
firecrawl_scrape

Research Superpower

Agents can now search, scrape, and synthesise the web natively — no API keys, no manual wiring. Install from ClawHub and go.

New Models & Platforms

MiniMax M2.7 default · Claude on Google Vertex AI

🤖

MiniMax M2.7

New default model

Replaces M2.5

Improved reasoning
Better tool use
Lower latency
Zero config change

☁️

Claude via Vertex AI

Google Cloud platform

GCP IAM / ADC

Enterprise auth via ADC
GCP IAM permissions
Regional endpoints
No API key needed

minimax/minimax-m2.7 vertex/claude-3-5-sonnet vertex/claude-3-7-sonnet openrouter/...

Set GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS or use gcloud auth application-default login

🔐 SSH Sandbox Backend

New pluggable sandbox system — bring your own execution environment

🔌

Pluggable Sandbox System

Swap execution backends without changing agent logic. Clean interface, infinite extension points.

🪞

Mirror Mode

Remote workspace mirrors local files in real time. Edit locally, execute remotely.

🌐

Remote Workspace Mode

Agent runs fully inside remote machine — no local file sync required.

🔑

Secret-Backed Credentials

SSH keys & certificates injected from secret store — never touch the filesystem.

ARCHITECTURE

🤖 OpenClaw Agent

↓

⬡ Sandbox Interface

↓

🐚 OpenShell Backend

🪞 Mirror
local → remote

🌐 Remote WS
fully remote

↓

🔐 SSH Transport

🗝️ Secret Store
keys / certs

↓

🖥️ Remote Host

📱 Android Upgrades

Mobile-first agent capabilities — expanding what your phone can do

💬

SMS Search

📞

Call Log Search

🌙

System Dark Theme

🔍

SMS Search

Query message history by contact, keyword, or date range. Agent can read and reference your conversations.

📋

Call Log Search

Search incoming, outgoing, and missed calls. Filter by contact or time window.

🎨

System-Aware Dark Theme

UI auto-switches with Android system theme. No manual toggle — just works.

🚀

Expanding Capabilities

Android is becoming a first-class agent surface. More device integrations coming in future releases.

📲 Your Android isn't just a chat interface anymore — it's a full agent endpoint.

🤔 Mid-Run Questions + DAG Summarization

Smarter agent runtime — ask without breaking flow, summarize without bloating

⚡ MID-RUN QUESTIONS

Problem: Asking a question mid-task used to inject context into the ongoing session, polluting future tool calls.

Solution: Questions are now isolated — ask anything during an agent run without altering the session's future context window.

🤖 Agent
Running

→

❓ User
Question

→

✅ Answer
(isolated)

Session context: unchanged ✓

🕸️ DAG SUMMARIZATION

Problem: Long-running agents generate session files that grow unboundedly, causing context overflows and slow loads.

Solution: DAG-based hooks summarize completed branches automatically — keeping session files lean without losing history.

Task A

Task B

Task C

↓ complete ↓

🕸️ DAG Hook → Summarize

↓

📄 Compact Summary Node

Session file stays bounded ✓

⚡ Performance: 35x Faster

Session loading is no longer the bottleneck

35×

faster session loading

🔄

JSON5 → Native JSON

Switched session file parsing to native JSON.parse(). Single biggest win.

🚫

No More Event-Loop Blocking

Eliminated synchronous I/O on hot paths. Agent stays responsive during heavy loads.

📦

Proactive Context Compaction

Long tool loops trigger compaction before context overflows — not after.

BEFORE / AFTER

⛔ Before

JSON5 parser (slow)
Blocking I/O on load
No compaction hooks
WhatsApp boot: tens of seconds

→

✅ After

Native JSON.parse()
Async, non-blocking
Proactive compaction
WhatsApp boot: seconds

~30s

WA cold boot before

→

<2s

WA cold boot after

🔧 Critical Fixes

Stability, security, and reliability — the unsexy work that matters most

✅

WhatsApp QR Pairing Fix
Resolved Baileys 515 stream error that caused QR scan failures. Pairing now succeeds 100% of the time.

✅

OpenRouter Vision Fix
Dynamic runtime checks now correctly detect vision capability per model. No more silent image-drop failures.

🔒

Windows SMB Credential Leak — Patched
UNC path injection in exec could expose NTLM credentials to a remote host. Now sanitised at input.

✅

Unicode Padding in Exec Prompts — Fixed
Invisible Unicode characters caused misaligned approval prompts. Stripped at render time.

🚀

Startup Time Improvements
Lazy-loaded non-critical modules. Cold start measurably faster across all platforms.

100%

WA QR success rate

SMB credential leaks

critical fixes shipped

v2026.3.22

Security Overhaul

The largest security patch in OpenClaw project history.

🔌

Device Pairing Gaps

Authentication gaps in the device pairing flow patched — rogue devices can no longer complete pairing without proper validation.

🪝

Webhook Authentication

Incoming webhook endpoints now enforce signature verification. Unauthenticated webhook delivery rejected at the gateway layer.

🪟

Windows SMB Credential Leak

Resolved UNC path injection vector on Windows that could trigger SMB authentication and expose NTLM credentials to a remote host.

🔤

Unicode Padding Exploit

Unicode zero-width / padding characters could bypass input length limits and filter checks. Now stripped and normalised before validation.

🔬

Researcher-Reported Vulnerabilities

Additional CVEs reported via responsible disclosure program — all patched in this release. A serious step forward in security posture.

⚠️

Breaking Changes

3 changes require action before upgrading

Plugin installs now default to ClawHub

openclaw plugin install <name> now resolves from ClawHub by default instead of npm. Existing plugins continue to work. Use --registry npm flag to force npm resolution.

Legacy Chrome extension relay path removed

The deprecated /relay/legacy Chrome extension endpoint has been removed. Run the migration tool to update your config automatically:

                $ openclaw doctor --fix
              

CLAWDBOT_* & MOLTBOT_* env vars removed

Final MoltBot → OpenClaw rebrand. Legacy prefixes are no longer read at startup. Switch all environment variables to the OPENCLAW_* prefix.

CLAWDBOT_* ✗ MOLTBOT_* ✗ → OPENCLAW_* ✓

🚨

Incident Report

Known Issue & Hotfix

SEV-2 · v2026.3.22 Initial Release Resolved ✓

Missing `dist/control-ui` directory in npm package

The initial v2026.3.22 npm package was published without the dist/control-ui directory, causing the dashboard UI to fail to load. Users on the initial release would see a blank screen or 404 when opening the OpenClaw control panel.

🛠️ Resolution — Hotfix Steps

Update to the hotfix release

npm i -g openclaw@latest

Verify dist/control-ui is

Available Now

Upgrade to v2026.3.22

Security

Largest security patch in project history