Bug type

Behavior bug (incorrect output/state without crash)

Summary

openclaw config validate rejects agents.list[].params even though this field is documented and appears to be supported by the runtime.

Steps to reproduce

Config snippet:

{
  agents: {
    list: [
      {
        id: "main",
        default: true,
        name: "Main Agent",
        workspace: "~/.openclaw/workspace",
        agentDir: "~/.openclaw/agents/main/agent",
        model: "anthropic/claude-opus-4-6",
        params: { cacheRetention: "none" }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Then run:

openclaw config validate

Expected behavior

agents.list[].params should be accepted by config validation, since it is documented as a per-agent override merged on top of agents.defaults.models[...].params.

Actual behavior

Validation fails because params under agents.list[] is treated as an unknown field.

OpenClaw version

2026.3.7

Operating system

Ubuntu 24.04

Install method

npm global

Logs, screenshots, and evidence

Impact and severity

Affects users who configure agents.list[].params as documented for per-agent model overrides. This is not channel-specific; it affects any OpenClaw deployment because the
failure is in global config validation.

Severity: moderate to high for affected users because it blocks a documented workflow, but it does not create data loss or security risk.

Frequency: always, as long as agents.list[].params is present.

Consequence: config validation fails, so users cannot use documented per-agent overrides like cacheRetention, temperature, or maxTokens. This can block setup for multi-
agent configs and forces users to remove the setting or give up agent-specific tuning.

Additional information

No response