openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix [Bug]: WhatsApp group text commands do not trigger while Telegram commands work

Summary

In a multi-agent WhatsApp setup, text commands such as /status and /commands do not trigger in a WhatsApp group, while Telegram commands work for the same agent/environment.

Environment

• OpenClaw: 2026.5.7
• OS: macOS 26.3.1 arm64
• Channel affected: WhatsApp group
• Channel not affected: Telegram DM
• Multi-agent setup: multiple agents bound to specific WhatsApp groups, plus separate DM routing
• commands.text=true
• WhatsApp group has requireMention=false
• WhatsApp normal chat messages are received and replied to successfully

What happened

After upgrading to 2026.5.7, normal WhatsApp group chat still works, but text commands like:

• /status
• /commands

do not produce the expected command response in the WhatsApp group.

The same agent was also enabled on Telegram, and commands there work. This suggests the command registry/parser itself is not globally broken.

A similar symptom was also observed by another user on 2026.5.6: WhatsApp commands worked in DM, but not in groups, also in a multi-agent setup with group bindings.

Suspected cause

The likely failure mode is that WhatsApp group messages may be transformed/enveloped before command detection. We observed local logs/prompts where group messages can appear with contextual prefixes such as:

[openclaw] /status

or embedded in a larger combined/contextual body before reaching downstream command handling.

The central command detection path appears to require the useful command string to begin with / after metadata stripping/normalization. If the WhatsApp group path sends an already-prefixed/enveloped body to command detection or BodyForCommands, /status no longer starts at position 0 and is not treated as a command.

Expected behavior

For WhatsApp groups with commands.text=true and requireMention=false, a message whose user-authored body is /status should be handled as a command, regardless of display prefixes or group context metadata used for the LLM prompt.

Actual behavior

• WhatsApp group receives/replies to normal messages
• /status and /commands do not execute as text commands
• Telegram commands in the same local gateway/agent setup work

Suggested fix direction

Ensure the WhatsApp group path preserves the raw user-authored message as the command source (CommandBody / BodyForCommands) before adding any display/context prefix. Command detection should run against the raw command text, not the combined/enveloped body.

A targeted regression test would simulate a WhatsApp group inbound message with raw body /status and a separate combined/display body containing group metadata/prefixes, and assert that command detection still handles /status.