OpenClaw 2026.4.1-beta.1 Pre-Release: Background Tasks Come to Chat with /tasks

OpenClaw has published version 2026.4.1-beta.1, a pre-release that focuses on making background task management a first-class citizen within chat itself.

What’s new: /tasks as a chat-native task board

The headline addition is the /tasks command, which surfaces a background task board directly in the current chat session. This gives users visibility into:

• Recent task details — what the agent has been working on in the background
• Agent-local fallback counts — displayed when no linked tasks are currently visible, giving operators diagnostic information at a glance

The change closes #54226, with thanks to contributor Vincent Koc.

Why it matters

OpenClaw agents run a lot of background work — web searches, file operations, API calls, cron-triggered tasks. Until now, operators had to dig into logs or separate dashboards to see what was pending or had failed. Putting task state into the chat interface means you can check on a running agent without breaking your flow.

For workflows that chain multiple agent steps together, the fallback counts are particularly useful — they tell you at a glance whether the agent fell back to default behavior and how many times, which is often the first signal something went wrong in a multi-step pipeline.

Status: This is a pre-release (beta). Expect more changes before it ships to stable.

Source: OpenClaw Releases — GitHub