OpenClaw 4.20 and 4.21: Kimi K2.6, Image 2 and the usual bug dance that breaks setups

OpenClaw dropped 4.20 and, a mere six hours later, 4.21. Textbook release cadence for @steipete’s project: push, discover the damage, patch. Let’s break it down.

What’s new in 4.20

4.20 is a substantial release, mostly cleanup and consolidation, with a few notable features:

• Kimi K2.6 as default - Moonshot/Kimi now defaults to kimi-k2.6, with kimi-k2.5 still available for compatibility. Also supports thinking.keep = "all" on K2.6, stripped for other Moonshot models when tool_choice is pinned.
• Tiered model pricing - Support for tiered pricing from cached catalogs, with bundled Kimi K2.6/K2.5 cost estimates in token-usage reports.
• BlueBubbles: per-group system prompts - Group behavioral instructions (tapback, threaded-reply conventions) are now injected every turn via GroupSystemPrompt. Supports * wildcard fallback. Closes #60665.
• Hardened GPT-5 prompt - System overlay for GPT-5/Codex now has stronger completion bias, weak-result recovery, and verify-before-final guidance.
• Cron: separate runtime state - jobs-state.json splits from jobs.json, so git-tracked job definitions stay stable while execution state mutates.
• Aggressive session maintenance - Entry cap and age prune are enforced by default, and oversized stores are pruned at load time to prevent gateway OOM.
• Compaction notices - Opt-in start and completion notices during context compaction.
• Mattermost: draft streaming - Thinking, tool activity, and partial replies stream into a single draft post that finalizes in-place.
• Improved onboarding - Single warning banner, headings, checklists, spinner during model catalog load, “API key” placeholder in prompts.

Plus: sanitizeForLog() optimization (single regex vs iterative loop), plugin loader reuse for leaner tests, Docker E2E for channel dependencies, and QA suite that fails by default on failed scenarios.

Anthropic re-allows OpenClaw? Not quite: limbo and model routing win

Anthropic re-allows OpenClaw? Not quite: limbo and model routing win

A post on r/openclaw sparked hope: “Anthropic allows OpenClaw again.” But the community quickly dismantled the optimism. Peter Steinberger had tweeted that Boris (from Anthropic) confirmed CLI-style usage is allowed. OpenClaw added support, only to find they were still blocked.

As user siberianmi put it: “It’s in a weird limbo where CLI use should work in theory but doesn’t in practice.”

Kimi K2.6 Beats GPT-5.4 at Code Review: antirez's Real-World Test on Richard Hipp's Patch

Salvatore Sanfilippo, better known as antirez, published a video testing three top-tier LLMs, Kimi K2.6, Claude Opus 4.7, and GPT-5.4, on a real code review task: analyzing a pull request from Dr. Richard Hipp, creator of SQLite, on the linenoise library. The result? The Chinese open-source model beat the American “golden standard” in one specific but instructive case.

Context: A PR from a Programming Legend

Antirez opens with a political and pragmatic premise: he watches Chinese models with growing interest not just for democratization, but as an exit strategy. Between transatlantic tensions and the risk that access to American models could become expensive or restricted, having viable alternatives is a practical necessity.