🚀 clawdbot 2026.1.21: A Major Step Forward in Workflow Automation and Security

The clawdbot team is excited to announce version 2026.1.21, a feature-rich release that introduces powerful new capabilities for typed workflows, enhanced security controls, and intelligent performance optimizations. This update reflects the community's feedback and sets a new standard for AI-powered automation platforms.

✨ Introducing Lobster: Typed Workflows with Approval Gates

The headline feature of this release is Lobster, an optional plugin tool that brings structured workflow automation to clawdbot. Lobster enables teams to define typed workflows with built-in approval gates, ensuring that critical operations maintain proper governance and oversight. This is particularly valuable for enterprises requiring strict control over automated processes.

🎨 Personalize Your Assistant: Custom Identity and Avatars

clawdbot now supports custom assistant identities and avatars throughout the platform. Users can configure unique identities for their agents and see them rendered beautifully in the Control UI. This personalization extends to per-session identity display, allowing teams to maintain consistent branding and improve user experience across all interactions.

🔧 Execution Approvals: Fine-Grained Security Controls

Security takes center stage with comprehensive execution approval enhancements. The new release introduces:

• Elevated Ask/Full Modes: Granular control over execution permissions with multiple security levels
• Approval Tables: Visual rendering of approval workflows on write operations
• Enhanced Allowlisting: Wildcard agent allowlists, tightened parsing, and safer binary execution
• Smart Targeting: Gateway and node targeting with detailed target information

These features work together to create a robust approval framework that defaults to local host execution while supporting flexible, enterprise-scale deployments.

⚡ Performance Boost: Intelligent Cache Optimization

One of the most impactful improvements in this release is the cache optimization system. The new cache.ttlPrune mode and auth-aware defaults significantly reduce token spend on cold requests. Combined with per-channel idle duration configuration via sessions.channelIdleMinutes, teams can now achieve better performance without sacrificing functionality.

📱 Enhanced Multi-Channel Support

This release strengthens clawdbot's multi-channel capabilities:

• Signal: Now supports typing indicators, read receipts, and improved message handling
• Microsoft Teams: Added attachment support for richer collaboration
• Per-Channel Customization: Debounce overrides for auto-reply and channel-specific idle durations

🎯 Improved User Experience

The CLI receives significant UX improvements in this release:

• Models Command Refresh: New /models command with improved listing UX and expanded paging capabilities
• Interactive Update Wizard: clawdbot update wizard provides interactive channel selection, restart prompts, and preflight checks
• Reorganized Commands: Gateway service commands now live under clawdbot gateway, while node service commands are flattened under clawdbot node
• Gateway Probe: New gateway probe command for checking reachability

🔐 Infrastructure and Operations

Behind the scenes, several operational improvements enhance reliability:

• Heartbeat Enhancements: Explicit session keys and active hours configuration for better session management
• Node Execution: Nodes now run in exec-style with PATH exposure in status/describe and bootstrap PATH for node-host execution
• Queue Management: Per-channel debounce overrides provide finer control over auto-reply behavior

🙏 Community Contributions

This release wouldn't be possible without the contributions from the clawdbot community. Special thanks to @vignesh07 for the Lobster plugin and models improvements, @dlauer for identity and avatar support, @robbyczgw-cla for Control UI enhancements, @zknicker for heartbeat improvements, and @cash-echo-bot for session management features.

📚 Get Started

Comprehensive documentation for all new features is available at docs.clawd.bot. Whether you're implementing Lobster workflows, configuring execution approvals, or optimizing cache performance, the docs provide detailed guides and examples.

🎉 What's Next?

With clawdbot 2026.1.21, teams can now build more sophisticated, secure, and performant automation workflows. The combination of Lobster's typed workflows, enhanced security controls, and intelligent caching creates a platform ready for enterprise-scale AI automation.

Update today and experience the next generation of clawdbot!