#Subagent spawn fails with 1008 pairing required on loopback gateway (OpenClaw 2026.4.12)

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keen sundial
#

Hey, trying to set up Opus 4.6 as a subagent fallback model but hitting a wall.

What's happening:
Any sessions_spawn call immediately fails with:

gateway closed (1008): pairing required
Gateway target: ws://127.0.0.1:18789
Bind: loopback

Gateway log snippet (repeats every ~1s):

warn gateway security audit: device access upgrade requested reason=scope-upgrade
scopesFrom=operator.read scopesTo=operator.approvals client=gateway-client
error gateway connect failed: GatewayClientRequestError: pairing required

Setup:

• OpenClaw 2026.4.12, macOS, node 25.8.1
• Gateway on loopback with token auth
• Telegram connected and working
• Main agent: MiniMax M2.7
• Subagent model: kie-claude/claude-opus-4-6
• Changelog fix #59555 supposedly covers this but still failing

Main agent works fine (chat, voice notes, heartbeats). Just the subagent spawn is broken.

Any known workaround or is this a remaining edge case?

jade crestBOT
#

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plush krakenBOT
fierce spokeBOT
#

Let me verify this against the actual docs/code so I don’t hand-wave a fix.

#

This looks like a stale device pairing scope, not an Opus-specific problem.

The key clue is your log:

scopesFrom=operator.read scopesTo=operator.approvals client=gateway-client

That means the gateway already knows this client, but it was previously paired with only operator.read.
The #59555 fix in 2026.4.12 prevents new subagent spawn flows from first pairing at too-low scope, but it does not retroactively widen an existing paired device entry.

So the workaround is:

openclaw devices list
openclaw devices approve <requestId>

A couple gotchas:

#
  • run devices list right before approving, because retries can supersede the old requestId
  • openclaw devices approve --latest only previews, it does not actually approve
  • if you're on the same machine, run it without --url so local fallback can help if the gateway itself says pairing required

If approving the pending upgrade does not stick, next step is:

openclaw devices remove <deviceId>

then retry one sessions_spawn, then:

openclaw devices list
openclaw devices approve <newRequestId>