Bug Description

In Telegram DM topics, Hermes can ingest messages authored by its own bot as fresh inbound user turns.

In practice this means synthetic/system/status text, including [SYSTEM: Background process ...] watcher notifications, can re-enter the Telegram conversation as if it came from the user. That can trigger unintended replies, create cross-topic noise, and make a topic appear stuck or "haunted" even after /reset.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Run Hermes gateway with Telegram enabled and DM topics in use.
2. Cause Hermes to emit any Telegram-visible bot-authored message in that DM/topic context.
   • One real path I observed was a watch-pattern background-process notification of the form: [SYSTEM: Background process ... matched watch pattern ...]
3. Observe the gateway logs.
4. Hermes records that bot-authored Telegram text as a new inbound message and processes it like a normal user turn.

Expected Behavior

Telegram messages authored by the Hermes bot itself should be ignored by inbound message handling.

In particular:

• bot-authored private-chat messages should not pass Telegram inbound gating
• synthetic/system/status messages should not become new user turns
• /reset should not be undermined by bot-authored follow-on ingestion

Actual Behavior

Bot-authored Telegram/system text is accepted by the Telegram adapter's inbound gate for private chats, then flushed/handled like ordinary user input.

This can survive a /reset, because the reset clears session state but does not fix the underlying self-ingestion path.

Affected Component

• Gateway (Telegram/Discord/Slack/WhatsApp)

Messaging Platform

• Telegram

Operating System

Ubuntu 25.10

Python Version

3.11.14

Hermes Version

Hermes Agent v0.9.0 (2026.4.13)

Relevant Logs / Traceback

2026-04-17 17:02:43,871 INFO gateway.run: inbound message: platform=telegram user=Jack chat=[redacted] msg='OK, so can you make a plan and then do all these fixes?'
2026-04-17 17:02:53,539 INFO gateway.platforms.telegram: [Telegram] Flushing text batch agent:main:telegram:dm:[redacted]:21657 (1 chars)

2026-04-17 18:22:27,980 INFO [20260408_105622_7cd83d] gateway.run: Pre-reset memory flush completed for session 20260408_105622_7cd83d

2026-04-17 18:58:49,311 INFO gateway.run: Watch pattern notification — injecting for telegram
2026-04-17 18:58:50,177 INFO gateway.run: inbound message: platform=telegram user=Jack chat=[redacted] msg='[SYSTEM: Background process proc_fc27dd253825 matched watch pattern "...'

Additional session evidence from the local state DB:

20260408_105622_7cd83d|Open Claw Upgrade Blocker #2|session_reset|...|...|gpt-5-codex
20260417_182207_ffea6235|Initial Assistance Prompt||...||gpt-5.4

That shows /reset did create a fresh topic session, but the Telegram self-ingestion path still existed afterward.

Root Cause Analysis

On current upstream main, gateway/platforms/telegram.py::_should_process_message() has an early DM fast-path:

if not self._is_group_chat(message):
    return True

There is no earlier check that rejects messages authored by self._bot.

So if Telegram delivers a bot-authored private message update back through the adapter, Hermes accepts it as processable input.

I verified this against current upstream origin/main (b449a0e0) with a minimal reproduction using a bot-authored private Message object; _should_process_message(...) still returns True.

Proposed Fix

Add an early self-message guard in gateway/platforms/telegram.py before the DM fast-path, roughly:

message_user = getattr(message, "from_user", None)
if message_user and self._bot and getattr(message_user, "id", None) == getattr(self._bot, "id", None):
    return False

Also add a regression test that verifies bot-authored Telegram private messages are ignored, including DM-topic scenarios.

Are you willing to submit a PR for this?

• I'd like to fix this myself and submit a PR