openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Runtime deps staging mirrors all 53 built-in plugins regardless of config — 25x size increase from v2026.4.27 to v2026.4.29 [1 comments, 2 participants]

Description

After updating from v2026.4.27 to v2026.4.29, the plugin runtime dependency staging directory exploded from 79 modules / 235MB to 551 modules / 4.5GB. This causes severe event loop stalls (60+ seconds), rendering the gateway effectively unresponsive.

The root cause appears to be that the runtime stages dependencies for all 53 built-in plugins regardless of which plugins are enabled in openclaw.json. Disabling plugins or removing them from plugins.entries has no effect on staging.

Environment

• OpenClaw version: 2026.4.29 (rolled back to 2026.4.27)
• OS: Linux 6.12.77-haos (x64) / HAOS add-on (Machine A), WSL2 on Win11 (Machine B)
• Node: v22.22.2
• Hardware: Intel N150 mini PC, 32GB RAM (Machine A); desktop PC (Machine B)
• Enabled plugins (Machine A): brave, xai, anthropic, google, moonshot, ollama, openrouter, openai, microsoft (9 plugins)
• Enabled plugins (Machine B): telegram, brave, anthropic, xai, moonshot, ollama, openrouter, deepseek, google, openai (10 plugins)

Reproduction

1. Install OpenClaw v2026.4.27 — observe runtime deps at ~235MB / 79 modules
2. Update to v2026.4.29 — observe runtime deps at ~4.5GB / 551 modules
3. Gateway becomes unresponsive during and after dep staging

Observed Behaviour

Dependency staging comparison

Event loop impact (from gateway diagnostic logs)

v2026.4.29 (Machine B):

[diagnostic] liveness warning: eventLoopDelayMaxMs=58082.7 eventLoopUtilization=0.971

v2026.4.27 after dep restaging (Machine B):

[diagnostic] liveness warning: eventLoopDelayMaxMs=59827.6 eventLoopUtilization=0.981

v2026.4.27 after staging complete (Machine A):

[diagnostic] liveness warning: eventLoopDelayP99Ms=360.4 eventLoopDelayMaxMs=10695.5 eventLoopUtilization=0.709

models.list stall

On both machines, the models.list WebSocket call takes 15-22 seconds on startup, blocking chat.history and sessions.list behind it:

[ws] ⇄ res ✓ models.list 22639ms
[ws] ⇄ res ✓ chat.history 22643ms
[ws] ⇄ res ✓ sessions.list 22665ms

After the initial stall, subsequent calls are fast (~71ms). This appears to be a separate but related issue.

Background npm install during operation

During dep staging, the gateway spawns npm install for packages not required by the user's config, including:

npm install @matrix-org/matrix-sdk-crypto-nodejs @matrix-org/matrix-sdk-crypto-wasm fake-indexeddb jiti markdown-it matrix-js-sdk music-metadata

This runs at 100-138% CPU and blocks the event loop for the entire duration (2-4 minutes).

Expected Behaviour

1. The gateway should only stage runtime dependencies for enabled plugins, not all 53 built-in ones
2. A config with 9-10 enabled plugins should not trigger installation of Matrix SDK, music-metadata, and other unrelated dependencies
3. Dep staging should not block the event loop — it should either complete before the gateway starts serving, or run without blocking the main thread
4. A fresh npm install of the same version should produce the same lean dep set as the original install, not a bloated variant with a different hash

Workaround

• Roll back to v2026.4.27 using npm install -g [email protected]
• Preserve the original lean runtime deps directory — do not delete it
• If deps were regenerated (bloated), delete the bloated staging directory and keep the original
• Do not clear the deps directory between restarts; restarts reuse existing deps and start fast

Suggested Fix

1. Filter staged deps by enabled plugins. Only install runtime dependencies for plugins that are enabled: true in the user's config. This alone would reduce the staging footprint from 53 plugins to typically 9-10.
2. Non-blocking staging. If staging must happen at runtime, run it in a worker thread or complete it before the gateway starts accepting connections.
3. Deterministic staging hash. A fresh npm install of the same version should produce identical deps to the original install, not a different hash with different (larger) contents.