Description

After updating to OpenClaw 2026.3.8, cron jobs with sessionTarget: "isolated" consistently time out. The same tasks work fine when run manually in the main session.

Timeline

• 2026.3.8 released: March 9, 07:44 GMT
• Last successful cron run: March 8, 09:00 (before update)
• First timeout: March 9, 09:00 (after update)

Evidence

• Cron job runs from March 7-8 succeeded with durations 37-85 seconds
• March 9 runs consistently time out at exactly the timeout limit (120s, 180s, 300s all tested)
• Manual execution in main session works perfectly (completes in seconds)
• 5 consecutive timeout failures at exactly the configured timeout boundary

Sample from cron runs:

Suspected Cause

The changelog mentions:

"Cron/owner-only tools: pass trusted isolated cron runs into the embedded agent with owner context so cron/gateway tooling remains available after the owner-auth hardening narrowed direct-message ownership inference."

This auth hardening may have broken isolated session execution for owner-owned cron jobs. The sessions appear to hang indefinitely rather than executing tool calls.

Workaround

Changing sessionTarget from "isolated" to "main" should work, but this is not ideal for isolated cron jobs.

Environment

• OpenClaw: 2026.3.8
• OS: Linux (Debian)
• Job type: agentTurn with isolated session
• Model: ollama/glm-5:cloud

Reproduction

1. Create a cron job with sessionTarget: "isolated"
2. Trigger the job manually or wait for scheduled run
3. Observe timeout at configured limit
4. Same task executed in main session works fine