OpenClaw 2026.10.5 delivers significant improvements in reliability, performance, and new capabilities. The `openclaw update` command is now more robust, completing across various environments and recovering from issues like stale handoff leases, ensuring updates are less likely to strand installations. Crucially, conversations are now restart-safe, meaning interrupted turns, subagent work, and user input survive Gateway restarts, preventing data loss and improving workflow continuity.
The Gateway itself is faster and lighter, with session, transcript, and history reads offloaded to worker threads, reducing SQLite overhead and memory usage back to 2026.10.4 levels. A new 'X channel' plugin enables answering Twitter mentions with streaming, guest mode, and API cost limits. Voice calls are enhanced with per-call briefs, reports, live steering, callbacks, and voicemail detection. Model pickers are smarter, prioritizing recommended models and instantly showing new Claude, ChatGPT, and Ollama models, with Google adding Gemini 4 Argon and Gemini 3.8 Flash. ClawHub integration in the Gateway allows browsing and searching plugins and skills directly, with automatic selection of the newest official plugin releases.
Breaking changes include stricter tool approval hooks, where ordinary hooks can no longer rewrite trusted-inline-approved tool arguments without re-approval, and plugins must request separate approval for final arguments. Additionally, plugin admission now rejects Codex runtimes older than 2026.9.7. Developers should consult `docs/plugins/hooks/tool-policy.md` for migration details. Performance across the board has been optimized, including session, turn, state, and maintenance operations, as well as agent and model catalog performance. Numerous fixes address memory leaks, data safety, security boundaries, turn reliability, restart recovery, and channel-specific issues for Telegram, Discord, Slack, and others. Upgrade is highly recommended for improved stability, performance, and access to new features, especially for users experiencing update or session reliability issues.