Bug type

Regression (worked before, now fails)

Beta release blocker

No

Summary

Agents cannot react to Discord DMs on 2026.4.15. The message action=react and action=reactions handlers require a channelId resolved to channel:<id>, but in a Discord DM the agent only has access to user:<userId> from chat_id. There is no DM channel id exposed anywhere in inbound context, so the only allowed target kind is unobtainable.

Historically this worked — older session transcripts (2026.4.13 and earlier, Opus 4.6-1m) show successful DM react calls using just messageId with no channelId, returning {ok: true, added: "..."}. Somewhere between 4.13 and 4.15 the fallback path was lost and the requirement tightened.

Related: #29503 (closed, stale) — same symptom family, different root cause. PR #29739 (never merged) addressed missing message_id in DM inbound meta. message_id is now present in 4.15 — but the DM channel id is still not, which is the actual blocker for Discord reactions.

Steps to reproduce

1. Send the bot a Discord DM

2. From the agent, call:

   message(action="react", emoji="👌", messageId="<inbound_message_id>")

3. Observe error

Passing target: "user:<userId>" (the value from inbound chat_id) also fails because resolveDiscordChannelId only accepts kind === "channel".

Expected behavior

React/reactions should accept user:<id> targets (or fall back to resolving the DM channel from messageId / inbound context) and work in DMs, matching the behavior of sendMessage which already handles user: targets correctly by creating/fetching the DM channel via POST /users/@me/channels.

Result should be {ok: true, added: "<emoji>"} with the reaction visible in the Discord client.

Actual behavior

Error: Discord channel id is required (use channel:<id>).

Reproducible on every Discord DM react attempt.

Root cause

• extensions/discord/api.(ts|js) react case:

  const resolveChannelId = () =>
    resolveDiscordChannelId(
      readStringParam(params, "channelId") ??
        readStringParam(params, "to", { required: true })
    );

• resolveDiscordChannelId hard-requires a channel-kind target via requireTargetKind

• inbound_meta.v2 exposes chat_id for DMs as user:<id>, not channel:<id>, and no DM channel id is cached or surfaced elsewhere for the agent to read

• sendMessage (Discord plugin) already handles user: targets correctly by calling resolveChannelId from send.shared — which does POST /users/@me/channels { recipient_id } via the REST client. The react/reactions path just doesn't reuse that logic.

Proposed fix (minimal)

Inside extensions/discord/api react/reactions handlers, reuse the existing DM channel resolution helpers from the Discord plugin's own send path:

async function resolveChannelIdForReaction(params, cfg, accountId) {
  const rawTarget =
    readStringParam(params, "channelId") ??
    readStringParam(params, "to", { required: true });
  const parsed = parseDiscordTarget(rawTarget, { defaultKind: "channel" });
  if (parsed && parsed.kind === "user") {
    const opts = { cfg, accountId };
    const { rest, request } = createDiscordClient(opts, cfg);
    const recipient = await parseAndResolveRecipient(rawTarget, accountId, cfg);
    const resolved = await resolveChannelId(rest, recipient, request);
    return "channel:" + resolved.channelId;
  }
  return resolveDiscordChannelId(rawTarget);
}

Call it from the react and reactions cases instead of the current sync resolveChannelId(). Both actions already await downstream calls, so making this async is a no-op to the signature.

Verified locally by patching the bundled dist/extensions/discord/api.js on 2026.4.15: DM reactions now succeed with just messageId (no channelId passed), returning {ok: true, added: "🥕"}. No behavior change for channel-kind targets. Monkey-patch diff posted as a comment below for anyone hitting this before an upstream fix lands.

Happy to open a PR against main if the approach is acceptable.

OpenClaw version

2026.4.15 (commit 041266a)

Operating system

Linux (Ubuntu, kernel 6.17.0-20-generic, x64)

Install method

npm (global, ~/.npm-global/lib/node_modules/openclaw)