Just a few hours after the major v2026.4.7 release, the OpenClaw team shipped v2026.4.8 to address a class of startup failures affecting npm-installed gateways. If you upgraded to 4.7 and saw channels failing to load, this patch is for you.
What Broke in npm Installs
The root cause was a set of bundled channels and plugins trying to import from missing dist/extensions/*/src/* files — paths that exist in development but do not get packaged into the published npm build. Affected channels include:
- Telegram — setup and secret contracts loading
- BlueBubbles, Feishu, Google Chat, IRC, Matrix, Mattermost, Microsoft Teams, Nextcloud Talk, Slack, and Zalo — all were affected by the same shared secret contract loading pattern
The fix loads setup and secret contracts through packaged top-level sidecars instead, resolving the missing import errors for all affected channels in one pass.
Bundled Plugin Compatibility Metadata
A secondary fix aligns the packaged plugin compatibility metadata with the release version. This ensures bundled channels and providers actually load correctly on OpenClaw 2026.4.8 instead of being silently skipped due to version mismatches.
Slack: HTTP Proxy Support for Socket Mode
Community contributor @mjamiv landed a fix that was notably absent for proxy-only Slack deployments: Slack's Socket Mode WebSocket connections now honor ambient HTTP_PROXY / HTTPS_PROXY environment settings, including NO_PROXY exclusions. (#62878)
Previously, users in environments where all outbound traffic routes through a proxy could not connect Slack via Socket Mode without a monkey patch. This is now handled correctly out of the box.
Slack: SecretRef-backed Bot Token Fix
A second Slack fix (from @martingarramon) ensures that when bot tokens are backed by a SecretRef, the already-resolved read token is passed correctly into downloadFile. Without this fix, SecretRef-backed tokens would fail after a raw config re-read. (#62097)
Network Fetch: Proxy-Only Sandbox DNS Fix
The network fetch guard now skips target DNS pinning when trusted env-proxy mode is active. This allows proxy-only sandboxes — where the trusted proxy handles all DNS resolution — to reach outbound hosts without the fetch guard blocking them. (#59007, thanks @cluster2600)
Exec Host Reporting Alignment
The /exec current-default reporting has been realigned with actual runtime behavior. Gateway and node sessions now correctly surface the full/off host-aware fallback policy instead of showing stale, stricter defaults that no longer reflect reality.
Upgrading
If you installed v2026.4.7 from npm and experienced channel startup failures, update to v2026.4.8 immediately. The full changelog is on GitHub. Both releases ship together today — running npm update openclaw will land you on 4.8 directly.