diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 106c4c19206..67f693db163 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -34,6 +34,7 @@ Docs: https://docs.openclaw.ai
 - Plugins/startup: install bundled runtime dependencies into each plugin's own runtime directory, reuse source-checkout repair caches after rebuilds, and log only packages that were actually installed so repeated Gateway starts stay quiet once deps are present.
 - Plugins/startup: ignore pnpm's `npm_execpath` when repairing bundled plugin runtime dependencies and skip workspace-only package specs so npm-only install flags or local workspace links do not break packaged plugin startup.
 - MCP: block interpreter-startup env keys such as `NODE_OPTIONS` for stdio servers while preserving ordinary credential and proxy env vars. (#69540) Thanks @drobison00.
+- Agents/shell: ignore non-interactive placeholder shells like `/usr/bin/false` and `/sbin/nologin`, falling back to `sh` so service-user exec runs no longer exit immediately. (#69308) Thanks @sk7n4k3d.
 - Setup/TUI: relaunch the setup hatch TUI in a fresh process while preserving the configured gateway target and auth source, so onboarding recovers terminal state cleanly without exposing gateway secrets on command-line args. (#69524) Thanks @shakkernerd.
 - Codex: avoid re-exposing the image-generation tool on native vision turns with inbound images, and keep bare image-model overrides on the configured image provider. (#65061) Thanks @zhulijin1991.
 - Sessions/reset: clear auto-sourced model, provider, and auth-profile overrides on `/new` and `/reset` while preserving explicit user selections, so channel sessions stop staying pinned to runtime fallback choices. (#69419) Thanks @sk7n4k3d.
diff --git a/src/agents/shell-utils.test.ts b/src/agents/shell-utils.test.ts
index e03867c2768..28909f66a8e 100644
--- a/src/agents/shell-utils.test.ts
+++ b/src/agents/shell-utils.test.ts
@@ -3,7 +3,12 @@ import os from "node:os";
 import path from "node:path";
 import { afterEach, beforeEach, describe, expect, it } from "vitest";
 import { captureEnv } from "../test-utils/env.js";
-import { getShellConfig, resolvePowerShellPath, resolveShellFromPath } from "./shell-utils.js";
+import {
+  detectRuntimeShell,
+  getShellConfig,
+  resolvePowerShellPath,
+  resolveShellFromPath,
+} from "./shell-utils.js";
 
 const isWin = process.platform === "win32";
 
@@ -139,6 +144,45 @@ describe("resolveShellFromPath", () => {
   });
 });
 
+describe("detectRuntimeShell", () => {
+  let envSnapshot: ReturnType<typeof captureEnv>;
+
+  beforeEach(() => {
+    envSnapshot = captureEnv([
+      "OPENCLAW_SHELL",
+      "SHELL",
+      "POWERSHELL_DISTRIBUTION_CHANNEL",
+      "BASH_VERSION",
+      "ZSH_VERSION",
+      "FISH_VERSION",
+      "KSH_VERSION",
+      "NU_VERSION",
+      "NUSHELL_VERSION",
+    ]);
+    delete process.env.OPENCLAW_SHELL;
+    delete process.env.POWERSHELL_DISTRIBUTION_CHANNEL;
+    delete process.env.BASH_VERSION;
+    delete process.env.ZSH_VERSION;
+    delete process.env.FISH_VERSION;
+    delete process.env.KSH_VERSION;
+    delete process.env.NU_VERSION;
+    delete process.env.NUSHELL_VERSION;
+  });
+
+  afterEach(() => {
+    envSnapshot.restore();
+  });
+
+  if (!isWin) {
+    it("ignores non-interactive SHELL placeholders and falls through to runtime hints", () => {
+      process.env.SHELL = "/usr/bin/false";
+      process.env.BASH_VERSION = "5.2.0";
+
+      expect(detectRuntimeShell()).toBe("bash");
+    });
+  }
+});
+
 describe("resolvePowerShellPath", () => {
   let envSnapshot: ReturnType<typeof captureEnv>;
   const tempDirs: string[] = [];