openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Agent-assisted direct package-manager self-update can leave core/plugins version-skewed and break Codex route

Issue

After updating OpenClaw from 2026.5.20 to 2026.5.27, the gateway restarted and appeared healthy, but Telegram agent turns failed and /new did not recover. Debugging showed a split state: core CLI/service was 2026.5.27, while managed plugins, especially @openclaw/codex, and some runtime/session metadata were still 2026.5.20, causing a Codex harness/provider mismatch.

User Screenshots

Screenshots of user conversation issue:

Trigger

The likely trigger was an agent-assisted self-update via direct pnpm add -g [email protected] instead of openclaw update / update.run, bypassing coordinated plugin/service finalization. Reason for this direct package manager update was a rule in Users Agents.md that all npm i -g installs should be done with bun. This led the agent astray from the internal guides to use first-class tools for self updating.

Recovery

Recovery required doctor repair, gateway service reinstall, managed plugin updates, and removal of stale explicit agentRuntime.id = "codex" model pins. (The main solution was probably the updates for the managed plugins. Not sure how far the other changes impacted restore)

Full debugging

Full original report and repair log are in https://github.com/bjesuiter/openclaw/issues/1. (Note: there are some unrelated things due to debugging in there, but the destillation still stands)

Improvement ideas

• Hard-guard agents to use update.run / openclaw update for OpenClaw self-updates.
• Warn/block direct npm|pnpm|bun -g openclaw self-updates when the updater is available.
• Surface/run openclaw update finalize after manual package-manager updates.
• Add startup/readiness checks for core/plugin version skew, especially managed @openclaw/codex.
• Improve the failure message from “make a new session” to an install/plugin skew diagnosis.

Expected behavior

• openclaw update uses its first_class update tool
• if a user rule overwrites this, openclaw might warn, so the user is aware that some of their rule overwrites the standard update path
• the error message after a partial update should clearly point the user to the update finalization command instead of /new
• maybe: self-heal this in gateway startup, but this might increase startup time and might be hard to detect