openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Updater prepends "Found and updated: False" to openclaw.json, corrupting config and dropping implicit agents [3 comments, 2 participants]

After an openclaw update on 2026-04-20/21, ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json was corrupted by the updater prepending a literal stdout line above the JSON payload. On restart, the config loader fell back to a minimal state and the main agent disappeared from the dashboard with error: "The agent 'main' is not in configuration." That leading line makes the file invalid JSON (jq parse error at line 1, column 6).

TL;DR

Separate stdout from the file write in the update step to prevent corruption of the openclaw.json file.

Guidance

• Verify the corruption issue by checking the openclaw.json file for the prepended stdout line and confirm that it's causing a JSON parse error.
• Manually restore the openclaw.json file from a backup (e.g., ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json.last-good or one of the .bak files) and add main to agents.list to temporarily recover the main agent.
• To prevent loss of implicit agents like main during updates, modify the update script to preserve any agent IDs that were implicitly active before rewriting agents.list.
• Review the shell redirection in the migration/update path to identify and fix the bug causing stdout to be captured into the config file.

Example

No code snippet is provided as the issue does not contain sufficient code details to create a minimal example.

Notes

The provided workaround may not be suitable for all users, especially those without a recent backup of their openclaw.json file. A more permanent fix would involve addressing the shell redirection bug and preserving implicit agent IDs during updates.

Recommendation

Apply the workaround by restoring from a backup and manually adding main to agents.list, as this provides a temporary solution to recover the main agent while the underlying issues are addressed.