- Docs: clarify that IRC uses raw TCP/TLS sockets outside operator-managed forward proxy routing, so direct IRC egress should be explicitly approved before enabling IRC. Thanks @jesse-merhi.

- Gateway/performance: defer non-readiness sidecars until after the ready signal, avoid hot-path channel plugin barrel imports, and fast-path trusted bundled plugin metadata during Gateway startup.

- Gateway/performance: avoid importing `jiti` on native-loadable plugin startup paths, so compiled bundled plugin surfaces do not pay source-transform loader cost unless fallback loading is actually needed.

- Gateway/diagnostics: add startup phase spans, active work labels, stale terminal bridge markers, and default sync-I/O tracing in `pnpm gateway:watch` so slow Gateway turns are easier to attribute from logs and stability diagnostics.

- Plugins/loader: preserve real compiled plugin module evaluation errors on the native fast path instead of treating every thrown `.js` module as a source-transform fallback miss. Thanks @vincentkoc.

- QA/Mantis: add `pnpm openclaw qa mantis slack-desktop-smoke` to run Slack live QA inside a Crabbox VNC desktop, open Slack Web, and capture desktop screenshots beside the Slack QA artifacts.

- QA/Mantis: pass the runtime env through desktop-browser Crabbox and artifact-copy child commands, so embedded Mantis callers can provide Crabbox credentials without mutating the parent process. Thanks @vincentkoc.