Bug type

Regression (worked before, now fails)

Beta release blocker

No

Summary

openclaw message send --channel telegram fails on every invocation because the Telegram plugin's bundled dep staging installs jiti@^2.6.1 without dist/babel.cjs, causing plugin registration to throw PluginLoadFailureError before any message is sent.

[plugins] telegram staging bundled runtime deps (31 specs): ...jiti@^2.6.1... [plugins] telegram installed bundled runtime deps in 3262ms [plugins] telegram failed during register from .../extensions/telegram/index.js: Error: Cannot find module '../dist/babel.cjs' Require stack:

• .../plugin-runtime-deps/openclaw-2026.4.29-4eca5026e977/node_modules/jiti/lib/jiti.mjs PluginLoadFailureError: plugin load failed: telegram

Steps to reproduce

1. Install OpenClaw 2026.4.29 via npm on Ubuntu 24.04
2. Configure a Telegram channel with a valid bot token
3. Run openclaw message send --channel telegram --target <any_chat_id> --message "test"
4. Observe: plugin staging completes (~3s) then fails with Cannot find module '../dist/babel.cjs'
5. Confirm: inspect .openclaw/plugin-runtime-deps/openclaw-2026.4.29-4eca5026e977/node_modules/jiti/ — dist/ directory is absent after staging

Expected behavior

Message sends successfully to the target Telegram chat.

Actual behavior

Command exits 1 with PluginLoadFailureError. The Telegram plugin stages its bundled runtime deps (including jiti@^2.6.1) on every invocation, but the staged jiti package is missing dist/babel.cjs. Plugin registration fails before any message is sent.

OpenClaw version

2026.4.29 (a448042)

Operating system

Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS (Noble Numbat) — Linux 6.8.0-111-generic x86_64

Install method

npm global install (npm install -g openclaw)

Model

claude-sonnet-4-6

Provider / routing chain

Anthropic API (direct)

Additional provider/model setup details

This bug fires at plugin load time — before any model or provider interaction — so routing config isn't relevant to the reproduction. Worth noting that explicitly:

Additional provider/model setup details: Not applicable to this bug. The failure occurs during Telegram plugin staging at CLI startup, before any model call or routing decision is made. Model in use: claude-sonnet-4-6 via Anthropic direct API. Telegram bot token configured as a SecretRef (env var). No per-agent overrides.

Logs, screenshots, and evidence

Impact and severity

High — openclaw message send --channel telegram is completely non-functional. Blocks all CLI and script-based outbound Telegram messaging.

Additional information

Two staging directories exist on this host. The older one (67e811bb8931, created 2026-05-02) contains jiti 2.6.1 with dist/babel.cjs present. The newer one (4eca5026e977, created 2026-05-14) stages jiti on every run but dist/ is absent after install — manual copy is overwritten on next invocation. Appears to be a jiti packaging regression introduced between those two dates. Workaround in use: direct Telegram Bot API calls via curl.