OpenClaw 2026.4.1 Ships Task Flow Orchestration Substrate, Android Assistant Integration, and Plugin Architecture Breaking Changes

On April 2, 2026, OpenClaw released version 2026.4.1, a significant update that introduces foundational orchestration primitives and platform expansion alongside breaking plugin architecture changes.

MAJOR NEW CAPABILITIES:

1. TASK FLOW ORCHESTRATION SUBSTRATE (PR #58930): The release restores and modernizes the core Task Flow substrate with managed-vs-mirrored sync modes, durable flow state/revision tracking, and openclaw flows inspection/recovery primitives. This enables background orchestration to persist and operate separately from plugin authoring layers. This is the most architecturally significant addition — it provides the foundation for complex multi-step agent workflows that survive process restarts and can be externally monitored.

2. MANAGED CHILD TASK SPAWNING (PR #59610): Adds managed child task spawning with sticky cancel intent, allowing external orchestrators to stop scheduling immediately and let parent Task Flows settle to cancelled once active child tasks finish. This enables reliable hierarchical agent workflow management.

3. PLUGIN TASK FLOW API (PR #59622): Introduces a bound api.runtime.taskFlow seam so plugins and trusted authoring layers can create and drive managed Task Flows from host-resolved OpenClaw context without passing owner identifiers on each call.

4. ANDROID GOOGLE ASSISTANT INTEGRATION (PR #59596): Adds assistant-role entrypoints plus Google Assistant App Actions metadata so Android can launch OpenClaw from the assistant trigger and hand prompts into the chat composer. This is OpenClaw expanding from CLI/chat to voice-first mobile interaction.

5. PLUGIN HOOKS EXPANSION (PR #20067): Adds before_agent_reply hook so plugins can short-circuit the LLM with synthetic replies after inline actions — enabling more sophisticated plugin behavior without full LLM round trips.

BREAKING CHANGES:

• xAI x_search settings moved from legacy core tools.web.x_search.* to plugin-owned plugins.entries.xai.config.xSearch.* (PR #59674)
• Firecrawl web_fetch config moved from legacy core tools.web.fetch.firecrawl.* to plugin-owned plugins.entries.firecrawl.config.webFetch.* (PR #59465)
• Both can be auto-migrated with openclaw doctor --fix

ADDITIONAL CHANGES:

• Provider-owned replay hooks for transcript policy and reasoning-mode dispatch
• Feishu Drive comment-event flow with thread context resolution
• Matrix spec-compliant m.mentions metadata across all send types
• WhatsApp reactionLevel guidance for agent reactions
• Exec defaults to YOLO mode (security=full, ask=off) on gateway/node hosts
• Compaction model override resolution and opt-in notification config
• DM-first native chat approvals auto-enabled when channels support approver inference

This release signals OpenClaw maturing from a chat-centric AI gateway to a full orchestration platform with durable workflow primitives, production-grade task management, and expanding platform reach (Android, voice assistants).