OpenClaw v2026.4.22: xAI Providers, TUI Mode, and Tencent Cloud

OpenClaw v2026.4.22 dropped on April 22nd and it is one of the biggest releases in recent memory. The changelog spans five new provider integrations, a fully standalone terminal mode, a diagnostics export tool, and a batch of performance wins that make the gateway meaningfully faster to start.

xAI Gets Full Multimedia Coverage

The headline item is a comprehensive xAI provider overhaul contributed by @KateWilkins. OpenClaw now supports:

• Image generation via grok-imagine-image and grok-imagine-image-pro, including reference-image edits
• Text-to-speech with six live xAI voices and output formats: MP3, WAV, PCM, and G.711
• Speech-to-text via grok-stt for audio transcription
• Realtime transcription for Voice Call streaming

On the STT front, Voice Call streaming transcription also expanded to cover Deepgram, ElevenLabs, and Mistral — joining the existing OpenAI and xAI realtime paths. ElevenLabs additionally gains Scribe v2 batch transcription for inbound media.

TUI Embedded Mode — No Gateway Required

@fuller-stack-dev contributed a long-requested feature: a local embedded mode for the terminal UI that lets you run full chat sessions without a running Gateway. Plugin approval gates remain enforced, so you don't lose any of the safety controls you'd normally get through the Gateway. This is a big deal for developers who want a lightweight local setup or want to test config changes without touching a running production Gateway.

New Providers: Tencent Cloud and Amazon Bedrock Mantle

Two new cloud providers land in this release:

Tencent Cloud — a bundled provider plugin with TokenHub onboarding, docs, hy3-preview model catalog entries, and tiered Hy3 pricing metadata. Contributed by @JuniperSling.

Amazon Bedrock Mantle — adds Claude Opus 4.7 via Mantle's Anthropic Messages route, with provider-owned bearer-auth streaming. This means the model is actually callable without treating AWS bearer tokens as Anthropic API keys — a subtle but important distinction for enterprise setups. Contributed by @wirjo.

Tokenjuice: Compact Your Noisy Tool Results

@vincentkoc contributed Tokenjuice as an opt-in bundled plugin. It compacts noisy exec and bash tool results during Pi embedded runs, which is particularly useful when you're running long agentic sessions that accumulate verbose output. Enable it under plugins.entries.tokenjuice.

/models add — Register Models Without Restarting

@Takhoffman contributed a /models add command that lets you register a new model directly from chat and use it immediately without restarting the Gateway. The existing /models command becomes a clean provider browser, with clearer guidance and copy-friendly examples.

GPT-5 Overlay Now Shared Across Providers

The GPT-5 prompt overlay moves out of the OpenAI plugin and into the shared provider runtime. Compatible GPT-5 models now receive the same behavior and heartbeat guidance whether routed through OpenAI, OpenRouter, OpenCode, Codex, or other GPT providers. The agents.defaults.promptOverlays.gpt5.personality toggle controls the friendly-style behavior globally.

WhatsApp Gets Per-Group System Prompts and Native Reply Quoting

Two quality-of-life improvements for WhatsApp users:

• Configurable native reply quoting via replyToMode, contributed by @mcaxtr
• Per-group systemPrompt forwarding into GroupSystemPrompt context, so configured behavioral instructions apply on every turn. Supports "*" wildcard fallback. Closes #7011, contributed by @Bluetegu

Performance Wins

This release is packed with startup and runtime performance improvements:

• 82–90% faster plugin loading with native Jiti loading for bundled plugin dist modules (#69925)
• 74% faster openclaw doctor non-interactive runtime with lazy-loaded plugin paths (#69840)

Diagnostics Export

@gumadeiras added a support-ready diagnostics export command that bundles sanitized logs, status, health, config, and stability snapshots. Stability recording is now also enabled by default. When you need to file a bug report, the tooling is now actually there to help you do it properly (#70324).

Notable Fixes

• Models/auth merge fix — re-authenticating an OAuth provider (like OpenAI Codex) no longer wipes other providers' aliases and per-model params. Fixes #69414
• Azure OpenAI image generation — proper Azure auth, deployment-scoped URLs, and AZURE_OPENAI_API_VERSION support
• OpenAI Codex CLI auth — removed the import path that copied ~/.codex OAuth material into agent auth stores; use browser login or device pairing instead
• Local backend token accounting — streaming usage now correctly recovered from llama.cpp-style timing metadata, fixing unknown/stale context totals
• /status Runner field — sessions now report whether they run on embedded Pi, a CLI-backed provider, or an ACP harness agent

The full changelog is available on the GitHub releases page. This is a recommended upgrade.