Two beta builds landed within two hours of each other tonight. OpenClaw tagged v2026.5.2-beta.2 at 20:40 UTC and v2026.5.2-beta.3 at 22:15 UTC on May 2nd — a rapid-fire release cadence that signals the 2026.5.2 milestone is nearly ready for stable. The morning already brought posts on thread bindings, Crestodian, and session I/O; tonight's builds carry a different set of headline changes.
Grok 4.3 Is Now the Default xAI Model
The biggest single-line change in both betas: xAI's Grok 4.3 has been added to OpenClaw's bundled model catalog and promoted to the default xAI chat model. If you have an xAI API key configured, your agents will start using Grok 4.3 automatically after updating — no config changes required.
This follows the same pattern OpenClaw used when it promoted Claude Sonnet 4 and GPT-4o as defaults for their respective providers. It keeps installations on a capable, current model without requiring every user to manually update their model: keys.
Plugin Externalization: ACPX and OpenTelemetry Leave Core
The most architecturally significant change in these betas is a wave of plugin externalization. OpenClaw has been moving optional subsystems out of the core npm package and into dedicated plugins, and this release pushes that effort significantly further:
- ACPX is now behind the official
@openclaw/acpxpackage. Packaged installs keep ACP harness adapter binaries out of core until explicitly installed. - Diagnostics OpenTelemetry moves to
@openclaw/diagnostics-otel, keeping the full OTEL dependency stack out of core installations. - Diagnostics Prometheus is similarly externalized for 2026.5.1-beta.2 ClawHub publishing.
This is a meaningful footprint reduction for users who don't need enterprise observability. A lean OpenClaw install stays lean.
A Dozen Channel Plugins Head to ClawHub
Beyond ACPX and OTEL, the release prepares a large batch of channel plugins for npm and ClawHub publishing:
- Discord, WhatsApp, Microsoft Teams, Matrix — all staged for beta.1 publish
- Google Chat, LINE, Mattermost, Nextcloud Talk — staged for beta.2
- BlueBubbles, Google Meet, Nostr, Zalo, Zalo Personal — also in the beta.2 wave
- Brave, Codex, Feishu, Synology Chat, Tlon, Twitch — beta.1 batch
Once these land on ClawHub, users will be able to install only the channels they actually use rather than shipping all of them in the core bundle. The openclaw plugins install clawhub:@openclaw/discord pattern is getting closer to being the standard way to set up a channel.
Gateway Startup and Hot-Path Performance
Both betas include targeted performance work for large or plugin-heavy installs:
- Startup secrets preflight: plugin-backed auth-profile overlays are now skipped during the startup secrets check, reducing gateway readiness latency. OAuth recovery and reload paths remain overlay-capable.
- Plugin registry reuse: the startup-loaded plugin registry is now reused for request-time providers, tools, channel actions, and memory helpers — eliminating repeated registry resolution on stable embedded runs.
- Descriptor caching: plugin tool descriptors registered via
api.registerTool()are now cached, so repeated prompt-time planning can skip plugin runtime loading entirely. Execution still loads the live plugin tool. - Path guard fast path: a new fast path for canonical absolute POSIX containment checks avoids repeated
path.resolveandpath.relativework in hot filesystem walkers (#75895).
Together, these changes should noticeably reduce startup time and per-request latency for setups with many plugins configured.
SDK tools.invoke RPC
The Gateway SDK gains a new tools.invoke RPC with shared HTTP policy, typed approval and refusal results, and SDK helper support (#74705). This is the foundation for external systems to programmatically invoke and respond to tool calls through the Gateway — a building block that ecosystem tools like AgentPort and BetterClaw are well positioned to use.
Other Notable Changes
- Slack App Home tab: a safe default App Home view is now published on
app_home_opened, and the Home tab event is included in setup manifests. This fixes a longstanding issue (#11655) where Slack bots would show a blank Home tab. - Slack thread persistence: bot-participated threads are tracked across Gateway restarts, so ongoing threaded conversations continue auto-replying after an upgrade or restart.
- Discord persistence: active buttons, selects, and forms now survive Gateway restarts until they expire, reducing broken multi-step Discord interactions during upgrades.
- macOS menu bar: recent session context rows move into a Context submenu, keeping the menu bar companion compact when many sessions are active.
- skipOptionalBootstrapFiles: a new
agents.defaults.skipOptionalBootstrapFilesoption lets you skip selected optional workspace files during bootstrap without disabling required setup (#62110). - Git plugin installs:
openclaw plugins install git:https://...now works with ref checkout, commit metadata, andplugins updatesupport for recorded git sources.
Upgrading
Both beta.2 and beta.3 carry the same 2026.5.2 feature set — beta.3 landed about 90 minutes after beta.2 with minor fixes. Run npm install -g openclaw@beta or openclaw update --beta to pick up the latest. Stable 2026.5.2 should follow within days at the current pace.
Full changelogs: v2026.5.2-beta.3 · v2026.5.2-beta.2