openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix config set can silently drop sibling fields on deep writes

Summary

openclaw config set can silently drop sibling fields when writing a deep path under channels.discord. The command reports success, but unrelated existing fields such as channels.discord.groupPolicy disappear or revert to default after the write.

Environment

• OpenClaw version: 2026.5.7
• Install path: native install via the official one-liner
• Host OS: Ubuntu 24.04

Reproduction

Start from a clean config and set a known field:

openclaw config set channels.discord.groupPolicy allowlist
openclaw config get channels.discord.groupPolicy
# prints: allowlist

Now perform any deeper write under channels.discord:

openclaw config set channels.discord.some.nested.field somevalue

Then inspect the earlier field again:

openclaw config get channels.discord.groupPolicy
# prints default or empty instead of allowlist

Expected

config set should mutate only the target path and preserve all sibling fields under the same subtree.

Actual

The deep-path write succeeds, but sibling fields may be stripped or reset. In our observed case, channels.discord.groupPolicy was lost after a deeper channels.discord.* write.

Why this matters

This is a dangerous failure mode because there is no validation error and no obvious log line. The config simply regresses. For Discord, losing groupPolicy: allowlist can silently broaden where the bot responds.

Likely cause

The CLI appears to round-trip the affected subtree through an internal typed struct that does not preserve every field in the live schema. Fields not represented in that struct are discarded on serialize.

A more robust implementation would:

• read the raw config as JSON,
• mutate only the requested path,
• write the raw config back,
• then validate the full resulting document.

Suggested fix

• Change config set to preserve unknown/existing sibling fields on deep writes.
• Add a regression test where a nested channels.discord.* write leaves channels.discord.groupPolicy intact.
• Audit other config subtrees for the same round-trip-loss behavior.

Notes

Primary source doc:

• docs/upstream-bugs/config-set-drops-siblings-on-deeper-write.md