Summary

After a global install via npm i -g openclaw@latest, the acpx extension plugin fails at startup because its dependencies are not installed. The extensions/acpx/node_modules/ directory contains only a stale .bin/ shim — the actual acpx package is missing.

Reproduction

npm i -g openclaw@latest
openclaw gateway run

Gateway log shows:

[plugins] acpx runtime backend registered (command: …, expectedVersion: any, pluginLocalInstall: disabled)
[plugins] acpx runtime setup failed: env: '…/extensions/acpx/node_modules/.bin/acpx': No such file or directory

Root Cause

The npm tarball for openclaw includes extensions/acpx/package.json with "acpx": "0.1.15" in dependencies, but npm i -g only installs root-level dependencies. It does not recurse into extension subdirectories, so extensions/acpx/node_modules/acpx/ is never populated.

Additionally, the .bin/.ignored_acpx shim left behind contains hardcoded paths from the build machine (/Users/steipete/Projects/clawdbot/node_modules/.pnpm/...), so even renaming it back wouldn't help.

Workaround

cd "$(npm prefix -g)/lib/node_modules/openclaw/extensions/acpx"
npm install --omit=dev

Then restart the gateway.

Expected Behavior

Extension dependencies should either:

1. Be bundled (pre-installed) in the published npm tarball, or
2. Be installed automatically via a postinstall script, or
3. The gateway should auto-install missing extension deps on first startup (similar to how pluginLocalInstall works when enabled)

Environment

• openclaw 2026.3.7 (npm i -g openclaw@latest)
• Node v24.14.0 (nvm)
• Ubuntu 24.04 (Linux 6.17.0)