openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Upgrade migration reduces openclaw.json to 323 bytes, losing all configuration [2 comments, 2 participants]

Summary

After upgrading to OpenClaw 2026.4.23, \openclaw.json\ was reduced to approximately 323 bytes, losing all user configuration including channels, agents, models, auth profiles, and gateway settings. No recovery prompt or warning was shown.

Version

OpenClaw 2026.4.23 (a979721) — triggered on upgrade from a prior version

Steps to Reproduce

1. Run OpenClaw upgrade with an existing \openclaw.json\ that was created/modified by PowerShell (verbose format, UTF-8 BOM, ~59,662 bytes).
2. Observe that post-upgrade \openclaw.json\ is ~323 bytes containing only minimal/empty configuration.

Expected Behavior

The upgrade migration should preserve all existing configuration. If a migration requires format changes, it should perform them in-place with a pre-migration backup. If the post-migration write would produce a file significantly smaller than the source, the migration should abort and alert the user rather than proceeding silently.

Actual Behavior

Config is silently truncated/replaced with a stub. All channels, auth profiles, agent settings, and model configuration are lost.

Impact

High — users lose complete configuration and must manually restore from backups or reconfigure from scratch.

Recovery

Restore from \openclaw.json.bak\ or equivalent backup. Do not restore from any .rejected.*\ file — those may be incomplete.