OpenClaw Digest: Enhancing Agent Tooling, Memory Management, and Gateway Stability

The latest set of merged pull requests for OpenClaw focuses on refining the precision of agent capabilities, ensuring the long-term stability of memory systems, and hardening the Gateway's reliability during shutdowns and restarts. Key highlights include the introduction of sender-based tool policies and a critical fix for unbounded memory growth in agents utilizing the 'dreaming' feature.

Merged PRs

• Make exec command highlighting optional Original PR
• [Feat] Add single-job cron get path Original PR
• Docs: announce BlueBubbles to iMessage migration Original PR
• build: clean up Node.js 26 deprecation warnings Original PR
• [Feat] expose session lineage metadata Original PR
• fix: constrain Codex app-server sandbox Original PR
• [Fix] Precompile auto-reply directive regexes Original PR
• feat(tools): per-sender tool capability tiers via toolsBySender Original PR
• Disable non-POSIX command approval highlights Original PR
• fix: honor configured media generation timeouts Original PR
• fix: abort generic no-progress tool loops Original PR
• fix(auto-reply): keep silent turn errors visible Original PR
• feat(wake): expose typed sessionKey on wake protocol + system event CLI Original PR
• fix(gateway): fire typed session_end on shutdown/restart for active sessions Original PR
• fix: restore /status context usage for Claude CLI Original PR
• fix(channels): improve error logging for bundled channel entry loading failures Original PR
• fix(doctor): warn routed agents missing message tool Original PR
• fix(memory): fall back to platform-specific sqlite-vec variant when meta package is missing Original PR
• fix(infra): dedupe system events by (text, contextKey) Original PR
• fix(ui): localize chat panel strings Original PR
• fix(control-ui): keep channel statuses responsive Original PR
• fix(models/auth): preserve default model unless --set-default Original PR
• fix(minimax): guard empty anthropic messages Original PR
• fix(telegram): honor force document for videos Original PR
• [codex] Fix Codex app-server OAuth harness auth Original PR
• fix(bonjour): avoid probing watchdog repair loops Original PR
• fix(doctor): consolidate Gateway service config panels into a single note Original PR
• fix(doctor): surface GH_CONFIG_DIR hint when gh auth lives at a different HOME Original PR
• fix(gateway): resolve inflight deduplication race for send and poll Original PR
• fix(memory-core): cap MEMORY.md size during dreaming promotions Original PR

Key Changes

Agent Capabilities and Tooling

One of the most significant additions is the toolsBySender configuration, which allows operators to define tool capability tiers based on the sender's identity. This ensures that guest users can be restricted from destructive tools (like exec or write) at the schema level, meaning the LLM is unaware these tools even exist for restricted users.

Additionally, tool execution has been hardened with a new critical block for "no-progress" loops. Previously, repeated tool calls with identical arguments and outcomes only triggered warnings; they now escalate to a critical block at a configured threshold to prevent wasted model cycles.

Memory and Storage Stability

To prevent catastrophic Gateway freezes, a size cap has been introduced for MEMORY.md during dreaming promotions. Previously, this file grew unboundedly, eventually exceeding the bootstrap injection limit and causing session write-lock timeouts. The system now automatically compacts the oldest auto-promoted sections to keep the file under a 10,000-character budget while preserving user-authored content.

On the infrastructure side, a fallback mechanism was added for sqlite-vec. If the meta package is missing (common in some global npm installs), OpenClaw now resolves the platform-specific variant directly, ensuring memory search remains functional.

Gateway and Protocol Enhancements

Gateway reliability has been improved by ensuring session_end hooks fire during process shutdowns or restarts. This prevents "ghost sessions" from accumulating in downstream plugins like claude-mem, which previously led to agent pool exhaustion.

Other notable protocol changes include:

• Session Lineage: ACP session listings now expose lineage metadata (parentSessionId, spawnDepth, etc.), enabling clients to render parent/child session graphs.
• Targeted Wake: The wake protocol and openclaw system event CLI now support an optional sessionKey, allowing external systems to target specific sessions rather than defaulting to the agent's main session.
• Inflight Deduplication: A race condition was resolved in the Gateway's inflight deduplication for send and poll requests, ensuring duplicate requests with the same idempotency key are correctly collapsed.

Diagnostics and DX

The openclaw doctor command has received several quality-of-life updates:

• GitHub CLI Discovery: It now detects when gh authentication exists at a different HOME than the agent process, providing a clear hint to set GH_CONFIG_DIR.
• Output Consolidation: Gateway service configuration warnings are now consolidated into a single note to reduce noise and duplicate calls to action.
• Route Validation: Doctor now warns if a routed agent is missing the message tool, which would cause channel actions like attachments or replies to fail.

Impact

These changes collectively reduce the operational overhead of maintaining OpenClaw instances. The memory capping for dreaming agents transforms a progressive failure (Gateway freeze) into a managed background process. The toolsBySender feature provides a critical security layer for multi-user deployments, moving from runtime blocking to context-level restriction.

For developers and operators, the improved session_end handling and targeted wake capabilities provide a more robust foundation for building complex, multi-session agent workflows. The diagnostic improvements in openclaw doctor significantly lower the barrier to troubleshooting environment-specific configuration issues, particularly regarding GitHub CLI and Gateway service layouts.