OpenClaw 2026.9.6 picks up unfinished work after a Gateway restart
By AgentRiot Editorial
The next release after atomic updates adds restart recovery, a public GitHub reader, remote-workspace files and Skills, and fuller Usage reporting. Several of those gains come with setup and permission boundaries.
OpenClaw 2026.9.6 shipped on September 23. The previous 2026.9.5 release concentrated on keeping the Gateway running while an update was prepared. This cut addresses what happens when a restart does interrupt work: eligible conversations can resume from their saved history, progress and tool results rather than leaving the operator to reconstruct the turn.
A restart is no longer the end of the conversation
The restart-recovery documentation says the Gateway detects and resumes eligible interrupted turns after startup. It also tries to let admitted work finish before a managed restart. An interrupted subagent is not blindly relaunched: the parent agent must establish what stopped and whether an action already took effect before trying again. Deliberately stopped conversations remain stopped, and continuation still depends on current permissions. A terminal process attached to the old Gateway does not survive. This is recovery of recorded work, not a guarantee that every external action can be retried safely.
The update path has a more legible outcome, too. Managed updates can report a verified new Gateway with recoverable plugin warnings or deferred maintenance, separately from a rollback to the previous version. A warning is not a clean bill of health: the release directs operators to stop the Gateway through its service owner, run openclaw update repair, and start it through that same owner when maintenance was deferred. That distinction matters more than another promise that updates cannot fail.
Read a PR without leaving chat; keep the workspace on its host
The new GitHub reader opens public issues, pull requests and commits alongside a Control UI conversation, including discussion, bounded diffs and snapshots of PR checks. It cannot read private repositories or write to GitHub. It is a Control UI reader, not a new GitHub CLI. The bundled plugin is enabled by default, but installations with an explicit plugins.allow list must add github and enable it or even their earlier GitHub previews will open externally. A checks snapshot is not a merge-readiness decision.
For agents whose workspace lives on a paired node, 2026.9.6 can move uploaded and generated files to and from that host and use its Memory files and supported Skills. This is not a transparent copy of the Gateway's local workspace. It needs an explicit host integration, current file and command grants, and matching OpenClaw versions on Gateway and node. Transfers default to 50 MiB per file; remote Skill source installation and ClawHub management are not supported by the paired-node adapter. If an enabled upload fails, the turn does not start without the file.
The Control UI's Usage view now starts with 30 calendar days and builds totals from the full accessible session report, not merely the rows visible in the list. Started by groups whole sessions by their recorded creator; older sessions without that field are Unattributed. Session-derived dollar figures are estimates, not provider bills, and a still-loading report can be incomplete.
Decision models are a separate, opt-in path
The release also introduces a Decision Model role for typed choices, scores and Boolean estimates. It does not replace the chat model or confer permission to act. A configured agent can explicitly use decision_evaluate under normal tool policy after a provider is installed and selected. The separate TypeSafe plugin can send supplied evidence to hosted Jev, with API charges, or to a local Kev server; the optional ONNX plugin offers local CPU models. None is provisioned just by upgrading. The Decision assistance Labs switch is off by default and, for now, connects no automatic consumers. It is not required for the explicit evaluation tool.
Before updating, make a verified backup: rolling back application code does not restore data. For a supported existing install, the recommended command is openclaw update; the 2026.9.6 npm metadata requires Node >=24.16.0 <25 || >=26.1.0. If upgrading from a version older than June 2026, the upgrade guide instead says to bridge through 2026.9.5 and its Doctor migrations first.
Mac users should check the 2026.9.6 release notice: the original app build crashed at launch, and OpenClaw replaced it with a notarized rebuild on September 24 at 09:52 UTC. Anyone with that earlier non-launching app build needs to install the replacement DMG once; the npm package did not change.