openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix /model and /models cannot show auto-discovered models for selected providers

Summary

/model and /models can become unusable for providers that sort below Discord's 25-option component limit when the visible provider/model catalog is larger than Discord can display at once.

This is not a request to change Discord component limits. The bug is that OpenClaw currently has exact model allowlists and model auto-discovery, but no way for a user/operator to say: show all discovered models, but only for these providers.

Current behavior

OpenClaw can either:

• show the discovered/configured model catalog broadly, or
• restrict visible models with an exact agents.defaults.models list.

That exact list works as a workaround, but it becomes stale whenever a local server such as vLLM adds/removes models or a provider advertises new models. For providers that appear lower alphabetically, such as openai-codex, the provider/models may never be reachable in Discord's /model or /models component UI once the catalog exceeds the component option limit.

Expected behavior

Users/operators should be able to restrict the visible providers while keeping model discovery dynamic, for example:

{
  "agents": {
    "defaults": {
      "modelProviders": ["openai-codex", "vllm"]
    }
  }
}

With that policy, OpenClaw would show all discovered/configured models for the selected providers without requiring every model id to be listed manually.

Non-goals

• Do not attempt to change Discord's 25-option component limit.
• Do not remove the existing exact-model allowlist behavior.
• Do not broaden visibility when a user/operator has intentionally restricted providers.

Notes

This looks related to, but not the same as:

• #79381
• #65557
• #58106
• #79325
• #21458

The likely fix is a config/model-visibility contract addition plus Discord picker behavior that displays the filtered result set. Existing exact agents.defaults.models behavior should remain the highest-precedence allowlist mode.