Router Plugin fails to load after updating to 5.x | Friends of the Crustacean 🦞🤝 | Page 1

Hey @marble sand — hitting a wall after upgrading from 2026.4.25 to 2026.5.3-1 on Windows. My custom workspace plugin (router-plugin) silently stopped loading. No error in the log, just drops from 3 plugins to 2 at boot.

What I've tried:

Plugin is at ~/.openclaw/extensions/router-plugin/
Had only openclaw.plugin.json and index.ts — compiled to index.js via esbuild (ESM, Node platform)
Added package.json with openclaw.extensions: ["./index.js"]
Ran openclaw plugins install <path> --dangerously-force-unsafe-install --force
Ran openclaw plugins registry --refresh
openclaw plugins list shows it as enabled, source correctly shows global:router-plugin/index.js, version 1.0.0
Config has it in both plugins.entries (enabled: true) and plugins.allow
Despite all this, gateway boots with only 2 plugins: memory-core, telegram — router-plugin silently absent, zero log output about it

The plugin uses definePluginEntry from openclaw/plugin-sdk/plugin-entry and registers on api.on("before_dispatch", ...). Worked fine through 4.x.

Anything change in 5.x around global/workspace plugin loading or the before_dispatch hook registration that would cause a silent drop like this?

#Router Plugin fails to load after updating to 5.x