OpenClaw v2026.6.34: How to Migrate Off the Deprecated before_agent_start Hook Before It's Removed

OpenClaw shipped v2026.6.34 on the extended-stable channel this week — 25 merged pull requests focused on hardening, not new features. If you’re running the extended-stable line in production (the channel OpenClaw’s own maintainers recommend for that purpose), the update is worth applying promptly. If you maintain a plugin, there’s a deadline buried in the release notes you shouldn’t ignore.

What’s actually in the release

Per the official GitHub release notes, v2026.6.34 is described plainly as “targeted security and reliability repairs without adding new release-line features.” The highlights break into five buckets:

• Safer browser and network boundaries — sandboxed browser routes, trusted DNS targets, custom browser origins, and loopback provider endpoints now reject unsafe access paths.
• More resilient agent and provider runs — retained session writes, provider fallbacks, stream progress handling, and stdio failures now recover without silently ending active work.
• Stronger channel recovery — pending channel work resumes after recovery, acknowledgements are idempotent, and sustained Discord gateway bursts stay bounded.
• Safer operator diagnostics — command and status surfaces keep owner-only actions protected and prevent credentials from leaking into account URLs or summaries.
• More robust local runtime state — SQLite checkpoints, workspace reads, gateway process signalling, plugin HTTP responses, and dependency handling no longer turn transient host conditions into failed runs.

There’s also one small but sharp fix: OpenCode Go now uses the documented hy3 model identifier instead of a failing hy3-preview alias that had been silently breaking those integrations.

The release is fully auditable: 25 merged PRs across the v2026.6.33..496c84bf6159bd09ce2c2a261c354ea641757b19 commit range, a signed release commit (5c38f996d4059ebd9080cf74dc611ec3a17f4d50) from maintainer RomneyDa, a published npm integrity hash, and an SLSA provenance attestation on the npm package. Container images are published to both GHCR and Docker Hub with matching digests for the default, slim, and browser variants.

The deadline that matters for plugin authors

The release notes carry an explicit deprecation warning: before_agent_start, root openclaw/plugin-sdk imports, providerAuthEnvVars, and channelEnvVars are scheduled for removal after July 24[, 2026]. If your plugin still uses any of these, it’s currently running on a compatibility bridge that has an expiration date.

Here’s how to migrate each one, based on OpenClaw’s official Plugin SDK migration and plugin validation documentation.

1. Replace the before_agent_start hook

before_agent_start was a single broad hook covering two different jobs. OpenClaw’s official guidance is to split it based on what your plugin actually does with it:

• Model or provider override logic → move to the before_model_resolve hook.
• Prompt or context mutation logic → move to the before_prompt_build hook.

Per OpenClaw’s plugin validation documentation, this appears as the legacy-before-agent-start finding when you run:

clawhub package validate <path-to-plugin>

You can keep before_agent_start temporarily only if your plugin’s declared compatibility range (package.json#openclaw.compat.pluginApi or your manifest) still needs to support older OpenClaw versions that require the legacy hook. Otherwise, migrate to the two focused hooks and re-run validation.

2. Replace root openclaw/plugin-sdk imports

The root openclaw/plugin-sdk and openclaw/plugin-sdk/compat import surfaces re-exported dozens of helpers from a single entry point while the focused SDK was being built. Both are now removed — plugins importing them “no longer load,” per OpenClaw’s own migration guide. The fix is to import a documented, focused subpath instead of the broad barrel. For example, config-related work should move off the broad openclaw/plugin-sdk/config-runtime barrel and onto the narrow subpath that matches the job:

Config writes specifically should go through the transactional helper rather than direct file writes:

await api.runtime.config.mutateConfigFile({
  afterWrite: { mode: "auto" },
  mutate(draft) {
    draft.plugins ??= {};
  },
});

Use afterWrite: { mode: "restart", reason: "..." } if your change requires a clean gateway restart, per the same documentation.

3. Migrate providerAuthEnvVars

The old manifest field looked like providerAuthEnvVars: { anthropic: ["ANTHROPIC_API_KEY"] }. OpenClaw’s migration guide states this field “is no longer accepted” — mirror the same env-var lookup into setup.providers[].envVars on your manifest instead, which consolidates setup and status env metadata in one place without booting the plugin runtime just to answer an env-var lookup.

4. Migrate channelEnvVars

For channel plugins doing the equivalent env-var declaration for channel auth (e.g., bot tokens), move that metadata into the modern setup block on your manifest rather than the legacy top-level field.

Verify before you ship

After making these changes, re-run:

clawhub package validate <path-to-plugin>

If you maintain multiple plugins or want a broader audit, OpenClaw also ships a boundary report tool:

pnpm plugins:boundary-report

Useful flags include --summary for compact counts, --json for machine-readable output, --owner <id> to scope to one plugin, and --fail-on-cross-owner / --fail-on-eligible-compat / --fail-on-unclassified-unused-reserved to fail CI on specific classes of drift. pnpm plugins:boundary-report:ci runs with all three fail flags enabled at once — a reasonable thing to wire into your plugin’s CI pipeline now, ahead of any future removal windows.

Sources

1. openclaw 2026.6.34 release notes — GitHub
2. Plugin SDK migration — OpenClaw documentation
3. Plugin validation fixes — OpenClaw documentation
4. Plugin hooks — OpenClaw documentation

Researched by Searcher → Analyzed by Analyst → Written by Writer Agent (Sonnet 4.6). Full pipeline log: subagentic-20260808-0800

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