Two fresh builds of OpenClaw v2026.5.4 landed in the early hours of May 5th. Beta.3, pushed at 6:14 AM UTC, is the one to pay attention to — it includes a critical fix for Discord users who upgraded to 2026.5.3 and found their channel quietly stopped working.
The Silent Discord Token Failure
If you upgraded to OpenClaw 2026.5.3 and configured Discord via an environment variable (channels.discord.token), there is a good chance your channel silently failed to start. Beta.3 patches the root cause.
When OpenClaw 2026.5.2 externalized the Discord plugin into a standalone npm package (@openclaw/discord), its compiled artifacts moved into a /dist/ directory. The secret-contract loader that reads per-channel SecretRef contracts — including the Discord token — only checked the package root, missing anything inside /dist/. The result: the Discord token SecretRef never resolved at gateway start, leaving the channel unconfigured with no obvious error message.
Beta.3 adds a /dist/ lookup pass to the external-contract loader so env-backed Discord tokens resolve correctly on startup again.
If your Discord channel stopped working after upgrading to 2026.5.3, update to the beta channel and confirm the channel comes back up. This fix will also ship in the next stable release.
New: openclaw models auth list
Beta.3 adds a long-requested quality-of-life command: openclaw models auth list. You can now inspect saved per-agent authentication profiles directly from the CLI, without dumping raw secrets or hitting the old "too many arguments" error.
# List all saved auth profiles
openclaw models auth list
# Filter to a specific provider
openclaw models auth list --provider openai
# Machine-readable output
openclaw models auth list --json
This is particularly useful when managing multiple agents with different provider credentials, or when debugging why an agent is picking up the wrong auth profile.
Gateway Startup Gets Faster
The 2026.5.4 beta cycle has brought a sustained focus on gateway startup performance, and beta.3 continues that work with several targeted improvements:
- Lazy plugin loading: Bundled plugin metadata now uses a fast path for trusted packages, avoiding repeated cold metadata scans on startup
- Deferred sidecars: Non-readiness sidecars start after the gateway's ready signal instead of before it, improving time-to-ready
- No jiti on native paths: Compiled plugin surfaces no longer pay the source-transform loader cost at startup unless a fallback is actually needed
Together, these changes reduce both startup time and memory pressure for the default Gateway configuration — especially noticeable on machines running multiple bundled plugins.
OpenRouter Response Caching (Opt-In)
Users routing requests through OpenRouter can now opt into response caching. When enabled, OpenClaw sends OpenRouter's X-OpenRouter-Cache, X-OpenRouter-Cache-TTL, and cache-clear headers on verified OpenRouter routes. This can reduce costs and latency for repeated or similar queries.
Beta.3 also expands OpenClaw's app-attribution categories on OpenRouter routes to include coding, programming, writing, chat, and personal-agent usage — giving OpenRouter better routing metadata for OpenClaw workloads.
Control UI Polish
The Control UI picks up several improvements across the beta.2 and beta.3 cycle:
- Agent name in breadcrumbs: The dashboard now shows the active agent name in header breadcrumbs across all non-chat views
- Collapsible cron sidebar: The "New Job" panel in the cron manager can now be collapsed, letting the jobs list reclaim screen space
- Chat deduplication: Consecutive duplicate messages (like repeated heartbeat acknowledgements) are collapsed into a single bubble with a count badge
- Responsive chat layout: Chat controls and the composer now adapt cleanly across phone, tablet, and desktop widths
How to Update
To get these fixes and features today, switch to the beta release channel:
npm install -g openclaw@beta
Or wait for the next stable release, which will include all 2026.5.4 improvements once the beta cycle wraps.