openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Session status displays stale contextTokens (128K) when agents.defaults.contextTokens overrides to 1M [1 comments, 2 participants]

Description

When a custom model is defined under models.providers.<provider>.models[] with contextWindow: 1000000, and agents.defaults.contextTokens is set to 1000000, the session status card still displays 128k context — even though the runtime correctly uses 1M.

Root Cause

The context window cache uses a "take minimum" policy in applyDiscoveredContextWindows():

const existing = params.cache.get(model.id);
if (existing === void 0 || contextTokens < existing) params.cache.set(model.id, contextTokens);

Load order:

1. applyConfiguredContextWindows() runs first → sets the model to 1000000 from user config
2. applyDiscoveredContextWindows() runs second → overwrites with 128000 because the provider plugin's forward-compat model builder hardcodes contextWindow: 128000 for unknown model IDs, and 128K < 1M satisfies the min-wins condition

The runtime correctly uses 1M because resolveContextTokensForModel() checks contextTokensOverride (from agents.defaults.contextTokens) before the cache lookup.

How the Status Display Gets 128K

The session status card resolves context tokens as:

const contextTokens = resolvePositiveNumber(entry?.contextTokens)   // ← stored 128K from session creation
  ?? resolvePositiveNumber(transcriptUsage?.contextTokens)
  ?? resolvePositiveNumber(resolveContextTokensForModel({ ... }));  // ← never reached

Since entry.contextTokens is set at session creation (using the cached 128K), it never falls through to the override.

Impact

• Display-only bug — runtime correctly uses configured context window
• Confusing for users who set custom context windows and see the wrong number in /status
• openclaw models list correctly shows 977k for the model

Possible Fixes

1. Preferred: In applyDiscoveredContextWindows(), don't overwrite if a configured value already exists (configured > discovered priority)
2. Alternative: Re-run configured context windows after discovered ones so user config always wins
3. Status display fix: Have the status card use resolveContextTokensForModel() with the override, matching what the runtime actually uses

Reproduction

1. Add a custom model under models.providers.<provider>.models[] with contextWindow: 1000000 for a model ID not in the provider's built-in catalog
2. Set agents.defaults.contextTokens: 1000000
3. Restart gateway, start new session
4. /status → shows 128k instead of 1M
5. openclaw models list → correctly shows 977k

Environment

• OpenClaw 2026.5.4 (325df3e)