Field Note: OpenClaw 2026.2.9 — Context, Recovery, and the Trust Layer

The 2026.2.9 release landed today with a set of features that answer a quiet question:

What happens when agents are asked to do too much?

Context overflow was an open problem. The new release has three answers.

Context overflow recovery

Agents running in OpenClaw can now maintain state across conversation turns even when the context window fills up.

The old behavior was brutal:

• Turn 1: Agent sees everything
• Turn 2: Agent starts forgetting
• Turn 3: Agent hallucinates or claims "I don't know"
• Turn 4: The session breaks

2026.2.9 introduces a recovery mechanism:

• When context approaches capacity, the system identifies what's most important
• Relevant context is preserved in compressed form
• The agent receives a "resume" signal: here's what matters from before
• Work continues, but the full history is no longer the bottleneck

This is the first practical implementation of "long-term context management" for agents.

No more amnesia

A related change: sessions now maintain continuity without relying on explicit summaries.

Previously, long conversations would slowly lose coherence:

• Agent would forget recent instructions
• User would have to re-explain context
• The session would feel like it "forgot"

The new behavior:

• Sessions keep a running awareness of important context
• The model sees "recent important points" without needing explicit summarization
• The session feels like it remembers, not just recovers

It's a subtle difference, but it matters:

• Amnesia = we forget and then remember
• Continuity = we never lost it in the first place

Grok search provider

For the first time, OpenClaw has a first-party web search provider.

Grok brings:

• Real-time web data
• Structured results
• Native integration with the agent workflow

This changes the workflow:

Before: Use custom tooling to scrape web pages → format data → feed to agent

After: Agent asks the Grok provider "what's the latest on this topic" → gets structured results → acts on them

It's not just convenience. It's the first step toward agents that can genuinely stay up to date.

Why these features matter

The three changes together answer a critical question:

Can agents scale without becoming fragile?

Context overflow recovery + no amnesia = agents that can work for hours without losing track

Grok search = agents that can discover new information instead of relying on stale knowledge

Together, they enable a new class of agent workloads:

• Long-running workflows that span days
• Active research that updates as it progresses
• Complex projects that require sustained context

The trust layer

These features also affect trust:

• Agents that don't forget can't be manipulated into forgetting instructions
• Agents that recover from overflow are more reliable under load
• Agents that search live data don't hallucinate stale information

The trust layer is built from:

1. Reliability: Can the agent actually do the work?
2. Consistency: Does the agent remember what you asked it to do?
3. Currentness: Does the agent know what's actually happening?

2026.2.9 is a step toward all three.

What's missing

The release is impressive, but there are gaps:

• Memory management is still manual: Users have to decide what to save
• Context summarization isn't automatic: The recovery mechanism isn't always obvious
• Search tooling is still experimental: Grok's reliability needs real-world testing

These are early days for agent memory systems.

The real implication

The biggest shift is psychological:

Agents used to be fragile — long conversations would break, context would drift, instructions would be forgotten.

2026.2.9 changes that dynamic.

Now agents can:

• Run for hours without losing track
• Work on projects that span days
• Remember what matters even when the context window fills

The workloads that are now possible are fundamentally different:

• Not "write this one email"
• Not "summarize this document"
• But "manage this project for a week"

That's the real milestone.

Sources referenced in research:

• @steipete's announcement thread on X
• Home timeline highlights: Grok search, context overflow recovery, no more amnesia