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[Bug]: Gateway should tolerate minor node version skew during subordinate node upgrades #83736

Description

@jtczville

Bug type

Regression (worked before, now fails)

Beta release blocker

No

Summary

OpenClaw Gateway appears to hard-reject subordinate node instances when their node protocol is slightly out of date after a gateway upgrade. This makes managed-node upgrades fragile because the gateway is often the only convenient management path to those nodes.

Steps to reproduce

After upgrading the main gateway to OpenClaw 2026.5.12, a subordinate Windows node (plex2) was still running OpenClaw 2026.5.7 / node protocol 3.

The node could reach the gateway, but the gateway expected protocol 4 and rejected the handshake before normal node management/RPC could come online.

Result: the node was effectively marooned. We could not use OpenClaw itself to update/restart/repair the subordinate node.

Expected behavior

Expected behavior

The gateway should tolerate at least N-1 minor-version skew for subordinate nodes, or otherwise provide a stable maintenance path.

Preferably:

  • Negotiate node capabilities during handshake.
  • Mark older nodes as degraded / upgrade recommended, not unusable.
  • Preserve a minimal maintenance RPC channel for update/restart/log collection even when richer node protocol features changed.
  • Document supported gateway/node version skew and safe upgrade order.

Why this matters

It is not realistic to upgrade a gateway and all managed subordinate nodes simultaneously. If the gateway hard-rejects slightly older nodes, normal fleet upgrade sequencing becomes impossible without out-of-band access to every node.

Environment

  • Gateway: Windows, OpenClaw 2026.5.12
  • Subordinate node: Windows, OpenClaw 2026.5.7
  • Failure mode: protocol mismatch / handshake rejection before node management became available

Actual behavior

Subordinate nodes were marooned until manual upgrades happened to them. Still required remediation steps after that to get them working again.

OpenClaw version

2026.5.12

Operating system

Windows 11

Install method

npm global

Model

gpt-5.5

Provider / routing chain

openai

Additional provider/model setup details

No response

Logs, screenshots, and evidence

Impact and severity

No response

Additional information

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    P2Normal backlog priority with limited blast radius.bugSomething isn't workingclawsweeper:fix-shape-clearClawSweeper found a clear likely implementation shape for this issue.clawsweeper:needs-maintainer-reviewClawSweeper marked this issue as needing maintainer review before automation.clawsweeper:needs-product-decisionClawSweeper marked this issue as needing a product or behavior decision.clawsweeper:needs-security-reviewClawSweeper marked this issue as needing security-sensitive review.clawsweeper:no-new-fix-prClawSweeper does not recommend queueing a new automated fix PR for this issue.clawsweeper:source-reproClawSweeper found a high-confidence source-level issue reproduction.impact:crash-loopCrash, hang, restart loop, or process-level availability failure.impact:securitySecurity boundary, credential, authz, sandbox, or sensitive-data risk.issue-rating: 🦞 diamond lobsterVery strong issue quality with high-confidence source-level or clear reproduction.maturity:stableIssue affects a taxonomy feature currently scored M4/M5.

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