4.29 Broke the Config - Silent Hang

[subtle finch]

Hey Krill @cloud saffron — tried upgrading to 4.29 tonight and ran into a hard hang on startup. Wanted to report in case it's a known issue.

Environment

• OS: Windows 11
• Node: (whatever your version is — run node -v and drop it in)
• Previous version: 4.27 (cbc2ba0) — clean and stable
• 4.29 build: a448042

What happened
Upgrade via npm install -g openclaw@2026.4.29. Gateway starts, prints the loading/auth lines, then hangs indefinitely at starting... — never progresses to plugin loading or HTTP server. No error thrown, no crash, just silent hang.

Config

• 3 plugins: memory-core, router-plugin (custom, before_dispatch), telegram
• 9 workspace hooks
• Custom lib stack under workspace
• No changes to openclaw.json between 4.27 and 4.29 attempt

What I tried

• Waited 3+ minutes — no movement
• Rolled back to 4.27 — clean startup in ~7s
• installs.json was untouched (4.29 hung before reaching plugin system)

Previous 4.29 attempt a few days ago got further and crashed on Cannot find package 'json5' — this time it didn't even get that far. Staying on 4.27 for now. Any known issues with 4.29 on Windows, or something I should check?

[dusky crest]

i am going through similar pain; i was on 4.27 all working fine; now i had to go through this 4.29 upgrade debugging without Krill; i moved past the plugin stage; now my channels are not stable; i am trying to run claude code to diagnose using the source code; i will share if i find something; if you want something specific regarding what i did so far as a fix was adding json5 to the symlink (ln -sf /app/node_modules/json5 /var/lib/openclaw/plugin-runtime-deps/node_modules/json5) ; this let me move on to the channel level; but still working on it