New AI models now reach OpenClaw on launch day

OpenClaw can now show a brand new AI model the day it is released, without waiting for a new version of OpenClaw. The change was described in a post on the OpenClaw blog by Ayaan Zaidi, published on the 6th of November 2026. According to the post, the OpenClaw team spent about five weeks rebuilding how OpenClaw finds out which AI models exist.

"Launch day is when people most want to try a model," Zaidi wrote in the post.

Three places the model list now comes from

A model list is the menu of AI models you can pick from inside OpenClaw. According to the blog post, OpenClaw now fills that menu from three places.

1. A catalog that refreshes itself. A catalog here means a shared list of known models, with their details and prices. The OpenClaw team runs one and rebuilds it every four hours, the post said. It starts from the public model directory models.dev, adds OpenClaw's own details and prices, and holds about 1,000 models today.

A running OpenClaw picks up the newer catalog in the background and switches to it live, with no restart. A conversation that is already going finishes on the list it started with, so its prices stay consistent. Models that have been retired are removed from the catalog, according to the post.

2. Your own provider account. A provider is the company whose AI you use, such as OpenAI or Anthropic. When you sign in to a provider, OpenClaw now asks it which models your account can use. It then shows every chat model on that list, including models that are newer than your copy of OpenClaw.

The post named these accounts:

• an OpenAI API key
• an Anthropic API key
• Claude Code, Anthropic's coding tool
• GitHub Copilot, GitHub's coding assistant
• a Grok subscription
• Ollama, where a model you download now shows up on the next refresh
• OpenCode Go

3. A newer Codex on the same computer. Codex is OpenAI's coding tool, which OpenClaw uses for people who sign in with ChatGPT. If a newer stable Codex is already installed on the machine, OpenClaw checks that it works and then uses it to list and run models, the post said. If there is none, OpenClaw uses the copy it ships with. OpenClaw never installs anything by itself.

Updating Codex on the computer is now enough to reach a new ChatGPT model that needs it.

What a model can do, read from the source

OpenClaw now reads what each model can do from the provider's own listing, according to the post. That covers its thinking levels, meaning how much effort the model puts into an answer, and the right way to talk to it. Earlier, OpenClaw worked this out from the model's name.

So a model OpenClaw has never seen before works with the correct settings from the first message.

A list that stays full and opens fast

The post listed several changes that keep every model on screen.

• When OpenRouter, a service that offers many models through one account, is slow to answer, OpenClaw now asks again by itself. The first retry comes after 30 seconds, then the gaps grow, up to 30 minutes.
• During a switch to a new catalog, a production gateway kept all 599 of its models visible the whole time. A gateway is the part of OpenClaw that stays running and connects you to the models.
• Changing the default model now takes between 0.6 and 1.4 seconds, according to the post. It used to take between 68 and 142 seconds, so the wait drops from more than a minute to under two seconds.
• Model pickers open at once and fill in the rest in the background.

A short list first, search for everything else

With about 1,000 models in the catalog, the list is long. OpenRouter alone lists 466 models, the post said. So the catalog now carries a short recommended list for each provider, and the pickers show it first. Search still covers every model.

The recommended list is chosen by hand and updated daily, according to the post.

What happens with a model newer than the catalog

The post also described how OpenClaw handles a model that is newer than the catalog itself. Such a model has no price yet, so OpenClaw shows its cost as unknown. It runs the model with cautious limits until the catalog catches up.

New models arriving this week

The OpenClaw community on Reddit has been tracking new arrivals. On the 3rd of November a post in r/openclaw announced that Particle-1 is available in OpenClaw, and on the 4th of November another said Tencent Hy4 is now supported.

What it means for someone who wants the newest model

The steps for a launch day are short. Sign in to the provider account inside OpenClaw. The new model appears as soon as the provider lists it for that account. For a ChatGPT model, keep Codex on the computer up to date.

OneClickClaw runs OpenClaw on your own private server. Plans start at EUR 14.99 a month (Starter), with a 7-day free trial.