OpenClaw 2026.3.22 Breaking Changes Release

🔑 Enhanced Key Takeaways

• •The transition to ClawHub is part of a broader security initiative to mitigate supply chain attacks by enforcing namespace verification for all third-party plugins.
• •The removal of Chrome MCP paths signals OpenClaw's shift toward a standardized Model Context Protocol (MCP) implementation that prioritizes cross-browser compatibility over platform-specific hooks.
• •The deprecation of legacy environment variables is intended to force adoption of the new centralized configuration schema, which now supports dynamic hot-reloading without requiring process restarts.

🛠️ Technical Deep Dive

• •Plugin SDK migration: Developers must replace import { Extension } from 'openclaw/core' with import { Plugin } from '@openclaw/plugin-sdk'.
• •Message Discovery: The discovery.find() method has been replaced by an asynchronous discovery.query() interface that utilizes a new indexing service.
• •Matrix Plugin: Implements end-to-end encryption (E2EE) by default using the matrix-js-sdk v34.x, requiring a local state-store migration for existing users.
• •Image Generation: Standardized on the image_generate tool, which now mandates a JSON-schema compliant payload for all model providers, replacing the previous unstructured string-based prompts.

🔮 Future ImplicationsAI analysis grounded in cited sources

⏳ Timeline