PR #29778: Fix WebChat image-only messages rejected as empty (opts.images not checked in hasMediaAttachment)

• Repository: openclaw/openclaw
• Author: wnzzer
• State: closed | merged: False
• Link: https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/pull/29778

Description (problem / solution / changelog)

Fixes #24662 Fixes #43590 Fixes #45487 Fixes #45917 Fixes #46534 Fixes #52673 Fixes #53271 Fixes #56561 Fixes #57064 Related #41801 Related #44446 Related #53687

Summary

• Problem: WebChat image-only messages are incorrectly rejected as empty with "I didn't receive any text in your message" because hasMediaAttachment does not check opts.images
• Why it matters: Blocks all multimodal workflows via WebChat — users cannot send images through the Control UI for agent analysis
• What changed: Added opts?.images && opts.images.length > 0 check to the hasMediaAttachment condition in get-reply-run.ts
• What did NOT change: No changes to text handling, session context media paths, or other reply logic

Root Cause Analysis

The hasMediaAttachment guard in src/auto-reply/reply/get-reply-run.ts only checked sessionCtx.MediaPath and sessionCtx.MediaPaths, but not opts.images. When WebChat sends images via chat.send with the attachments parameter, they arrive as opts.images — completely bypassing the media check.

Other channels (Telegram, Discord, QQ, 飞书, etc.) use sessionCtx.MediaPath / sessionCtx.MediaPaths (set by their respective channel ingestors), so they are unaffected. This is a WebChat-specific bug.

  const hasMediaAttachment = Boolean(
-   sessionCtx.MediaPath || (sessionCtx.MediaPaths && sessionCtx.MediaPaths.length > 0),
+   sessionCtx.MediaPath ||
+   (sessionCtx.MediaPaths && sessionCtx.MediaPaths.length > 0) ||
+   (opts?.images && opts.images.length > 0),
  );
  if (!baseBodyTrimmed && !hasMediaAttachment) {
    await typing.onReplyStart();
    logVerbose("Inbound body empty after normalization; skipping agent run");
    typing.cleanup();
    return { text: "I didn't receive any text in your message. Please resend or add a caption." };
  }

WebChat Frontend Image Path (confirmed via source code audit)

The Control UI handles images through three paths:

1. Paste — Listens for paste events, reads clipboardData.items of type image/*
2. File picker — input[type=file] change event with accept="image/*"
3. Drag & drop — dragover + drop event handlers

All three convert images to base64 data URLs and send them via chat.send:

await e.client.request(`chat.send`, {
  sessionKey: e.sessionKey,
  message: r,
  deliver: false,
  idempotencyKey: s,
  attachments: [{type: "image", mimeType: t.mimeType, content: base64Content}]
})

The gateway correctly parses these into opts.images via normalizeRpcAttachmentsToChatAttachments(). The only missing piece is the hasMediaAttachment guard not checking opts.images.

Change Type (select all)

• Bug fix
• Feature
• Refactor
• Docs
• Security hardening
• Chore/infra

Scope (select all touched areas)

• Gateway / orchestration
• Skills / tool execution
• Auth / tokens
• Memory / storage
• Integrations
• API / contracts
• UI / DX (WebChat image handling)
• CI/CD / infra

User-visible / Behavior Changes

• Image-only messages sent via WebChat will now be correctly processed by the agent
• Previously, such messages were rejected as empty with "I didn't receive any text in your message"

Security Impact (required)

• New permissions/capabilities? No
• Secrets/tokens handling changed? No
• New/changed network calls? No
• Command/tool execution surface changed? No
• Data access scope changed? No

Repro + Verification

Environment

• OS: Linux 6.8.0-101-generic (x64)
• Runtime/container: Node.js v22.22.1
• Model/provider: Any multimodal model
• Integration/channel: WebChat (Control UI)

Steps

1. Open WebChat / Control UI
2. Paste or drag-and-drop an image (no text caption)
3. Send the message

Expected (after fix)

• Agent receives and processes the image
• Model sees the image content and responds accordingly

Actual (before fix)

• Message rejected: "I didn't receive any text in your message. Please resend or add a caption."

Test Coverage

Added two test cases in src/auto-reply/reply/get-reply-run.media-only.test.ts:

1. allows image-only messages via opts.images without sessionCtx media — Core scenario. Sends images via opts.images (WebChat path), verifies the message proceeds to the agent runner.
2. still rejects empty messages when opts.images is an empty array — Boundary case ensuring images: [] still triggers the empty-body rejection.

Notes

• #53271's analysis is partially incorrect: WebChat does upload images; the real problem is the backend rejecting them, not the frontend failing to upload.
• A secondary issue exists: hasInboundMedia() in get-reply.ts has the same blind spot for opts.images, which may skip media understanding and sandbox staging for WebChat images. Tracked in #53687.

Compatibility / Migration

• Backward compatible? Yes
• Config/env changes? No
• Migration needed? No
• Revert plan: Single-line revert

CI Note

The 3 failing jobs (checks-node-test-4, checks-windows-node-test-1/2) fail on resolveChannelModelOverride > keeps bundled Feishu parent fallback matching before registry bootstrap — a known upstream issue caused by Tiangong model endpoint timeouts. Unrelated to this PR's changes. The new tests pass across all other lanes.

Failure Recovery (if this breaks)

• How to disable/revert this change quickly: Revert the commit
• Files/config to restore: N/A
• Known bad symptoms reviewers should watch for: None expected

Risks and Mitigations

• Risk: Minimal — single condition addition following existing patterns
• Mitigation: Uses optional chaining and array length validation, matching the MediaPaths pattern

Changed files

• src/auto-reply/reply/get-reply-run.media-only.test.ts (modified, +60/-0)
• src/auto-reply/reply/get-reply-run.ts (modified, +3/-1)

PR #61808: 🤖 Fix WebChat image-only messages rejected as empty (opts.images not checked in hasMediaAttachment)

• Repository: openclaw/openclaw
• Author: wnzzer
• State: closed | merged: False
• Link: https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/pull/61808

Description (problem / solution / changelog)

🤖 AI-Assisted PR

Built with Claude Code (AI coding agent).

• Testing degree: Lightly tested — change applies existing test patterns; tests exist upstream
• I confirm I understand the code: Yes — single-condition addition to `hasMediaAttachment` guard

Fixes #24662 Fixes #43590 Fixes #45487 Fixes #45917 Fixes #46534 Fixes #52673 Fixes #53271 Fixes #56561 Fixes #57064 Related #41801 Related #44446 Related #53687

Summary

• Problem: WebChat image-only messages are incorrectly rejected as empty with "I didn't receive any text in your message" because hasMediaAttachment does not check opts.images
• Why it matters: Blocks all multimodal workflows via WebChat — users cannot send images through the Control UI for agent analysis
• What changed: Added opts?.images && opts.images.length > 0 check to the hasMediaAttachment condition in get-reply-run.ts
• What did NOT change: No changes to text handling, session context media paths, or other reply logic

Root Cause Analysis

The hasMediaAttachment guard in src/auto-reply/reply/get-reply-run.ts only checked sessionCtx.MediaPath and sessionCtx.MediaPaths, but not opts.images. When WebChat sends images via chat.send with the attachments parameter, they arrive as opts.images — completely bypassing the media check.

Other channels (Telegram, Discord, QQ, 飞书, etc.) use sessionCtx.MediaPath / sessionCtx.MediaPaths (set by their respective channel ingestors), so they are unaffected. This is a WebChat-specific bug.

  const hasMediaAttachment = Boolean(
-   sessionCtx.MediaPath || (sessionCtx.MediaPaths && sessionCtx.MediaPaths.length > 0),
+   sessionCtx.MediaPath ||
+   (sessionCtx.MediaPaths && sessionCtx.MediaPaths.length > 0) ||
+   (opts?.images && opts.images.length > 0),
  );
  if (!baseBodyTrimmed && !hasMediaAttachment) {
    await typing.onReplyStart();
    logVerbose("Inbound body empty after normalization; skipping agent run");
    typing.cleanup();
    return { text: "I didn't receive any text in your message. Please resend or add a caption." };
  }

Change Type

• Bug fix
• Feature
• Refactor

Security Impact

• New permissions/capabilities? No
• Secrets/tokens handling changed? No
• New/changed network calls? No
• Command/tool execution surface changed? No

Compatibility

• Backward compatible? Yes
• Config/env changes? No
• Migration needed? No
• Revert plan: Single-line revert

Changed files

• src/auto-reply/reply/get-reply-run.media-only.test.ts (modified, +60/-0)
• src/auto-reply/reply/get-reply-run.ts (modified, +233/-157)

PR #61811: 🤖 Fix WebChat image-only messages rejected as empty (opts.images not checked in hasMediaAttachment)

• Repository: openclaw/openclaw
• Author: wnzzer
• State: open | merged: False
• Link: https://github.com/openclaw/openclaw/pull/61811

Description (problem / solution / changelog)

🤖 AI-Assisted PR

Built with Claude Code (AI coding agent).

• Testing degree: Lightly tested — change follows existing patterns
• I confirm I understand the code: Yes — single-condition addition to hasMediaAttachment guard

Fixes #24662 Fixes #43590 Fixes #45487 Fixes #45917 Fixes #46534 Fixes #52673 Fixes #53271 Fixes #56561 Fixes #57064 Related #41801 Related #44446 Related #53687

Summary

• Problem: WebChat image-only messages are incorrectly rejected as empty with "I didn't receive any text in your message" because hasMediaAttachment does not check opts.images
• Why it matters: Blocks all multimodal workflows via WebChat — users cannot send images through the Control UI for agent analysis
• What changed: Added opts?.images && opts.images.length > 0 check to the hasMediaAttachment condition in get-reply-run.ts

Root Cause

The hasMediaAttachment guard only checked sessionCtx.MediaPath and sessionCtx.MediaPaths, but not opts.images. When WebChat sends images via chat.send with the attachments parameter, they arrive as opts.images — completely bypassing the media check.

Other channels (Telegram, Discord, QQ, 飞书, etc.) use sessionCtx.MediaPath / sessionCtx.MediaPaths, so they are unaffected. This is a WebChat-specific bug.

  const hasMediaAttachment = Boolean(
-   sessionCtx.MediaPath || (sessionCtx.MediaPaths && sessionCtx.MediaPaths.length > 0),
+   sessionCtx.MediaPath ||
+   (sessionCtx.MediaPaths && sessionCtx.MediaPaths.length > 0) ||
+   (opts?.images && opts.images.length > 0),
  );

Security Impact

• New permissions/capabilities? No
• Secrets/tokens handling changed? No
• Command/tool execution surface changed? No

Compatibility

• Backward compatible? Yes
• Config/env changes? No
• Revert plan: Single-line revert

Changed files

• src/auto-reply/reply/get-reply-run.media-only.test.ts (modified, +64/-0)
• src/auto-reply/reply/get-reply-run.ts (modified, +3/-1)