Summary

Fresh npm i -g openclaw does not install sharp, causing browser screenshot image resize and media-understanding image ops to fail with:

Optional dependency sharp is required for image attachment processing

Root Cause

extensions/media-understanding-core/image-ops.ts:57 dynamically imports sharp and throws when it's missing. However, sharp is not declared in package.json under dependencies, optionalDependencies, or peerDependencies. So npm install never installs it.

Users currently have to manually run:

SHARP_IGNORE_GLOBAL_LIBVIPS=1 npm i sharp@0.34.5 --no-save --prefix $(dirname $(realpath $(which openclaw)))/..

Suggested Fix

Add sharp to optionalDependencies in root package.json:

 "optionalDependencies": {
+  "sharp": "^0.34.5",
   "sqlite-vec": "0.1.9"
 }

Using optionalDependencies (not dependencies) because:

• sharp has native bindings that can fail to build on some platforms (Homebrew libvips conflicts, musl, etc.)
• The codebase already handles the missing-sharp case gracefully with a clear error message
• This matches the existing pattern used for sqlite-vec

Environment

• OpenClaw 2026.5.16-beta.6
• macOS, Node 22
• Affects: browser screenshot resize, media-understanding image ops, any path through extensions/media-understanding-core/image-ops.ts