Ayaan Zaidi explained on the OpenClaw blog on 6 November how the project changed the way the program learns about new models. Previously, each provider’s model list sat in its plugin’s file, which shipped with the OpenClaw package. A new model therefore became selectable only in a new release.

GPT-6.1 Sol prompted the change. ChatGPT decides which models to offer based on the Codex version the client reports. OpenClaw bundled Codex 0.158.0, but Sol is offered only to version 0.159.2 and newer, so users signed in with ChatGPT accounts could not select the model. The overhaul took about five weeks and roughly 80 pull requests.

Three sources for the model list

The first source is catalog.openclaw.ai, a catalogue the project maintains that holds about 1,000 models. It is rebuilt every four hours from models.dev model data plus OpenClaw’s own data and prices. A running Gateway picks up a new catalogue without a restart. It still finishes a response turn already in progress with the old catalogue, so that the model list and prices match.

In September the catalogue stopped updating. After models.dev split one of its entries in two on 21 September, the publishing job failed every time. As a result, GPT-6 Sol and Luna did not reach existing installations during that period. A missing provider now triggers only a warning.

The second source is the user’s own account. When users sign in to a provider, OpenClaw fetches the account’s model list and shows its chat models. These include models newer than the installation and models that only that account can access. The change covers OpenAI and Anthropic API keys, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, a Grok subscription, Ollama and OpenCode Go, among others. OpenClaw now reads reasoning effort levels and the request format from the provider’s listing; previously it guessed them from the model name.

A model newer than the catalogue has no price yet. OpenClaw shows its cost as unknown and applies conservative default limits to it until the catalogue updates.

The third source is Codex. When fetching the model list, the first fix reported the latest Codex version on npm, but the bundled version still generated the responses. The model appeared in the picker, but the first message could fail with an HTTP 400 error. The change was reverted.

OpenClaw now looks for Codex in the command search path (PATH). If the Codex it finds is a stable release, newer than the bundled one and on the same major version, OpenClaw tests the connection to it. If the test passes, the same program fetches the model list and generates the responses. Otherwise OpenClaw uses the bundled Codex. OpenClaw installs nothing itself. If no newer Codex is installed, the bundled version still decides which ChatGPT models are available.

The model list no longer shrinks

By the project’s own figures, a single OpenRouter timeout previously cut the list from 466 models to three. OpenClaw now retries the fetch itself, first after 30 seconds and then less often, at intervals of up to half an hour. Switching the default model now takes 0.6–1.4 seconds, down from 68–142 seconds.

The command openclaw models list --refresh shows the models an installation can use. If OpenClaw does not show a model the account lists, the project asks users to file a bug report and attach the command’s output.