OpenClaw ships a May 2 beta update focused on session reliability, gateway repair, plugin stability, and GPT-5 transport fixes

OpenClaw published a May 2 beta release that bundles a broad set of operational fixes across agents, sessions, gateway startup, plugin handling, upgrades, and the Control UI. One of the most important changes shifts GPT-5 API-key sessions to default to the SSE Responses transport unless WebSocket is explicitly selected, fixing cases where fresh Control UI and WebChat beta installs connected successfully but did not surface model events.

The release also tightens session lifecycle handling so completed or timed-out runs do not remain stuck in a running state because of stale in-memory metadata. On the operations side, `openclaw gateway start` can now repair stale managed-service definitions that point to old OpenClaw versions, missing binaries, or temporary installer paths before startup continues.

Other changes in the same release improve packaged upgrades, beta external plugin installs, Codex binary resolution, large session-store polling, cron rendering safety, and dashboard reconnect behavior in the Control UI. Taken together, this is a meaningful product and platform maintenance release rather than a minor patch, and it should be treated as one OpenClaw update story instead of several separate same-day release entries.