openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix [Bug]: ERR_MODULE_NOT_FOUND 'openclaw' still happening on 2026.4.22 (Telegram channel + scheduled cron) — same root cause as #71484, fix appears incomplete on upgrade path [1 comments, 2 participants]

Bug type

Regression (worked before, now fails)

Beta release blocker

No

Summary

Same root cause as #71484 (closed 2026-04-25 as completed) — the bundled-deps installer for ~/.openclaw/plugin-runtime-deps/openclaw-<VER>-<HASH>/node_modules/ populates ~250 transitive packages but does not install or symlink the openclaw package itself, so every extension importing openclaw/plugin-sdk/* fails with ERR_MODULE_NOT_FOUND at runtime.

I'm reporting this against 2026.4.22 on Linux Rocky 9.7 (Node v22.22.2) — install came from npm i -g openclaw. The fix from #71484 doesn't appear to be effective for this combination, or the gateway was upgraded to 2026.4.22 from an older version without re-staging deps. Either way the visible symptom is identical and impacts more than Discord.

In my case the broken path was Telegram, not Discord — every cron job that calls openclaw message send --channel telegram ... failed silently for days (cron lastStatus: error, all 14+ scheduled jobs that send Telegram notifications). Affected my whole proactive notification flow (security audit summaries, daily PM reports, doc-sync confirmations).

Steps to reproduce

1. Linux host, openclaw 2026.4.22 global (/usr/lib/node_modules/openclaw/), Node 22.22.2.
2. Configure a Telegram account in ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json.
3. Run any cron that sends Telegram, e.g. openclaw message send --channel telegram --account <id> --target <chat> --message "test".
4. Observe failure:

Error [ERR_MODULE_NOT_FOUND]: Cannot find package 'openclaw' imported from
/home/<USER>/.openclaw/plugin-runtime-deps/openclaw-2026.4.22-4eca5026e977/dist/extensions/telegram/action-runtime-BHjxTwhY.js

1. Confirm the missing peer:

$ ls ~/.openclaw/plugin-runtime-deps/openclaw-2026.4.22-4eca5026e977/node_modules/openclaw
ls: cannot access ...: No such file or directory

Expected behavior

node_modules/openclaw should exist inside the runtime-deps version directory (either real install or symlink to the host-global package when versions match), as suggested in #71484.

Actual behavior

node_modules/openclaw is missing entirely. All 8 extensions that import from openclaw/plugin-sdk/* (acpx, amazon-bedrock, amazon-bedrock-mantle, anthropic, codex, discord, google, telegram) fail at module resolution time.

Workaround applied locally

ln -s /usr/lib/node_modules/openclaw \
  ~/.openclaw/plugin-runtime-deps/openclaw-2026.4.22-4eca5026e977/node_modules/openclaw

After this single symlink the Telegram channel started working immediately (verified via openclaw message send → message delivered).

Why this might be reappearing after #71484 was closed

Possible reasons (I haven't read the merged fix):

1. The fix only runs on fresh installs of the runtime-deps directory; existing dirs from earlier versions don't get patched in-place when openclaw is upgraded from 2026.4.x → 2026.4.22.
2. The fix only covers Discord (which was the original symptom) and didn't generalize to all 8 extensions that import openclaw/*.
3. Possible interaction with #72374 (bundled runtime dependency staging running npm without isolated package root).

Suggesting a small openclaw doctor --fix check that verifies node_modules/openclaw exists inside every version dir under plugin-runtime-deps/ would catch this for users coming in via upgrade rather than fresh install.

OpenClaw version

OpenClaw 2026.4.22 (00bd2cf), host CLI from /usr/bin/openclaw → /usr/lib/node_modules/openclaw.

Operating system

Linux Rocky Linux 9.7 (kernel 6.17.9-1-pve, Proxmox VM, x86_64).

Install method

npm i -g openclaw on Node v22.22.2.

Model

all (this is below the model layer)

Provider / routing chain

Telegram channel + any extension importing openclaw/* from the bundled runtime.

Logs, screenshots, and evidence

$ openclaw message send --channel telegram --account dinnerkids --target <CHAT_ID> --message "test"
Error [ERR_MODULE_NOT_FOUND]: Cannot find package 'openclaw' imported from /home/agente/.openclaw/plugin-runtime-deps/openclaw-2026.4.22-4eca5026e977/dist/extensions/telegram/action-runtime-BHjxTwhY.js

$ ls ~/.openclaw/plugin-runtime-deps/openclaw-2026.4.22-4eca5026e977/node_modules/ | grep -i openclaw
(empty)

$ ln -s /usr/lib/node_modules/openclaw ~/.openclaw/plugin-runtime-deps/openclaw-2026.4.22-4eca5026e977/node_modules/openclaw

$ openclaw message send --channel telegram --account dinnerkids --target <CHAT_ID> --message "test"
✅ Sent via Telegram. Message ID: 678

Impact and severity

For my deployment: 14+ scheduled cron jobs across 3 agents (pm-dinnerkids, security-dinnerkids, docs-dinnerkids, plus several from a separate sobot agent) silently failed on every Telegram send for days. The work itself (audits, vault sync, PM reports) ran to completion — only the user-facing notification was lost — so it was easy to miss. Detection only happened when manually reviewing cron lastStatus.

Additional information

Related: #71484 (closed, same root cause, originally Discord-only), #72374 (open, isolated package-root proposal that would also address this).