2026-08-21 · NextClaw v0.42.0

Published: 2026-08-21 Tags: release npm minor

NextClaw v0.42.0 improves service-app usability with clearer compatibility and sidebar behavior.

Features

Main sidebar app groups: Pinned Panel Apps can stay in the main sidebar as grouped entries, keeping frequent entry points discoverable.
Marketplace compatibility messaging: The marketplace now clearly shows whether an app is supported on the current platform and why when it is not.
Bundled Node for in-product apps: Desktop Service Apps declaring node or node.exe use the Node runtime shipped with NextClaw, reducing system dependency risk.
Faster session resume: Tool-calling sessions first show a protected recent context window, then backfill recent history to reduce repeated hydrate work.

More consistent install feedback: platform-incompatible install failures are now scoped to the app row instead of being pinned as a global retry state.
More resilient packaged UI assets: nextclaw now always publishes validated gzip sidecars in ui-dist, allowing static deployment layers to reuse compressed assets directly.
Sidebar entry consistency: Add/remove flow for pinned sidebar entries now keeps management actions and navigation paths consistent.

This release does not change platform protocol versions. Native Rust/Go Service Apps continue to launch via platform-specific artifacts.