openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Bug: Text-only assistant responses not delivered to Telegram group chats

Description

Text-only assistant responses (no tool calls) generated in Telegram group chat sessions are not being delivered to the Telegram group. Only responses that include at least one tool call (e.g. web_search) successfully reach Telegram.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Bot is added to a Telegram group with requireMention: false and group policy configured
2. A user asks a question in the group
3. Assistant generates a text-only reply (no tool calls, just type: "text" content with stopReason: "stop")
4. Message is written to the session transcript but never sent to Telegram

Evidence

• Sent-messages tracker (sessions.json.telegram-sent-messages.json) only records delivery for the tool-involved response (message 1575). All subsequent text-only responses have no record in the sent-messages tracker.
• Session transcript shows the text-only assistant responses were generated with stopReason: "stop" and proper metadata, but no Telegram message_id was ever assigned.
• Delivery queue is empty — no pending or failed items.
• Direct Telegram Bot API calls (sendMessage) work fine for the same group chat.

Environment

• OpenClaw version: v2026.5.4
• Telegram mode: long polling (grammY)
• Channel config: requireMention: false, groupPolicy: "open", replyToMode: "off"
• Model: deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash (tested on both flash and v4-pro)

Expected Behavior

Text-only assistant responses should be delivered to the Telegram group, not silently dropped. The session transcript showing the response should correlate with actual delivery.

Additional Notes

• Direct DMs (non-group) are not affected in the same way
• The first response in a group session that includes tool calls delivers fine
• Subsequent text-only responses are logged in the session transcript but not sent
• Workaround: always include a tool call in group responses to force delivery