OpenClaw v2026.2.15: Nested Sub-Agents, Discord Components v2, and Major Security Hardening

The latest OpenClaw release dropped yesterday (Feb 16th) and it's packed with powerful new capabilities. Here's what you need to know.

🤖 Nested Sub-Agents Are Here

Perhaps the most exciting addition: sub-agents can now spawn their own sub-agents. This enables complex multi-tier agent architectures where your main agent delegates to specialized sub-agents, which can further decompose tasks.

To enable, set in your config:

agents:
  defaults:
    subagents:
      maxSpawnDepth: 2  # Allow sub-sub-agents

The release includes maxChildrenPerAgent limits (default 5), depth-aware tool policies, and proper announce chain routing so results bubble up correctly. Thanks @tyler6204 for this feature!

💬 Discord Components v2: Rich Interactive Prompts

Discord users get a major UX upgrade with Components v2 support. Your agents can now present:

• Buttons for quick actions
• Select menus for choices
• Modals for form input
• Attachment-backed file blocks

This unlocks native interactive experiences through Discord rather than plain text. Exec approval UX also got refinements with CV2 containers and better button layouts. Thanks @thewilloftheshadow!

🔌 LLM Input/Output Hooks for Extensions

Extension developers can now observe what goes into and comes out of the model via new llm_input and llm_output hook payloads (#16724). This enables:

• Custom logging and analytics
• Prompt/output monitoring
• Usage tracking extensions

Thanks @SecondThread for opening this up!

🔐 Security Hardening (Read This!)

This release includes substantial security work:

• SHA-256 for sandbox hashing - Replaces deprecated SHA-1
• Telegram token redaction - Prevents accidental bot token leakage in logs
• Container escape prevention - Blocks dangerous sandbox Docker configs (bind mounts, host networking, unconfined seccomp/apparmor)
• Stored XSS prevention in Control UI
• Web fetch memory protection - Caps response body size to prevent exhaustion from huge/nested pages
• Unicode-aware memory search - CJK and non-ASCII queries now work properly in FTS

Other Notable Changes

• Per-channel ack reactions - Customize acknowledgment emojis per Slack/Discord/Telegram channel
• Cron webhook tokens - Dedicated auth token support for outbound cron webhooks
• Group chat context fix - Agents now maintain group awareness across all turns, not just the first
• Browser retry guidance - Models won't loop on browser tool calls when the service is unavailable

Upgrade Notes

This is a quality release with no breaking changes noted. The security fixes alone make it worth updating immediately.

Full release notes: https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/releases/tag/v2026.2.15