OpenClaw 2.0 Introduces Shared Workspaces for Collaboration, Multi-Machine Work

The newly updated OpenClaw comes with a new architecture, one that moves the open source agent harness from a single-user app reliant on local files to a database-driven collaborative workspace capable of running tasks in the cloud.  

OpenClaw v2 (AKA v2026.8.1) took nearly two months to complete and appears to be a complete overhaul, a far cry from the nearly daily updates that the software has had in the past.

“The release cadence slowed, but development moved in the opposite direction because our team was growing, and the increased volume and pace of work outgrew both the foundation of OpenClaw and the process we used to ship it, so we reworked both at the same time,” wrote OpenClaw Foundation Community Manager Hannes Rudolph, in an introductory post.

Multi-Player Mode

The software has also moved from a single-user experience to multi-user mode. A feature called “Shared Cloud Sessions” supports live multi-user handoffs and state synchronization across multiple machines.

A cloud session is work that can be moved from one machine to another. This would be useful for cases where a user would like to offload a job from their own computer to work remotely in the cloud.

Users can also share sessions, where one user is designated as the lead and the others can observe the actions. And sessions can be handed from one user to another. 

To the user, the session appears exactly the same. It continues to show results in the sidebar and stream back into chat. The completed work is reconciled back to the session’s managed worktree. A gateway coordinates the activity across the two devices, maintaining the state should the remote device cease operation. The model stays with the local device and is proxied through the gateway. 

This new feature came about due to how the OpenClaw development team was working. They needed a way to share and hand off tasks. “OpenClaw had no way to bring another team member into the work without losing what the Claw already knew,” Rudolph explained.

Crabbox Provides the Sandbox

OpenClaw 2.0 can bring in other machines simply through a command, which tells the gateway to accept a WebSocket-based inbound connection for the paired device. The gateway issues a persistent, role-scoped device token to the remote device, which must have node agent software installed (software is available for macOS, Linux and Windows). 

Another option is to use disposable cloud sandboxes, built on an open source project called Crabbox, which provides a control plane for managing multiple cloud sandboxes via a “Crabbox Coordinator.”  

Thus far, Amazon Web Services, Azure, Google Cloud all offer brokered sandbox services, with many others offering direct CLI connections. You can also host the crabboxes yourself with Kubernetes and various virtual machine environments.  

A Large Release

A total of 933 contributors added to the project, including 569 first-time contributors, resulting in over 16,000 pull requests.   

OpenClaw v2 comes with an embedded copy of the SQLite database, bringing structured schemas, atomic transactions and fast indexing. Before Claw simply stored everything in JSON or Markdown logs. 

The new database in turn enables a number of features. Full-text transcripts are now available. And thanks to lower disk I/O overhead, any data-related work should move more quickly. 

In addition to shared sessions, OpenClaw has also streamlined the installation process. Instead of the user entering third-party app information directly, the installation script scans the user’s machine for existing credentials to ChatGPT or Claude subscriptions, API keys, and local models.

The full release notes for OpenClaw v2 can be found here.