openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Bug: WhatsApp outbound video sends succeed but media never appears in chat [1 comments, 2 participants]

Summary

WhatsApp outbound video delivery appears to succeed through the message tool / gateway, but the recipient never receives any visible video in chat.

Environment

• OpenClaw: 2026.4.5
• Host: Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS
• Channel: WhatsApp
• Session type: direct chat
• Gateway healthy, WhatsApp linked

Repro

1. Generate a small MP4 video (in this case from video_generate with xai/grok-imagine-video).
2. Copy it into the documented outbound folder:
   • /root/.openclaw/media/outbound/...mp4
3. Send via the documented path using the message tool with filePath to WhatsApp.
4. Gateway returns success with a WhatsApp message id.
5. Recipient receives nothing visible in chat.

What was tried

Attempt 1

Send generated file directly from tool media path. This was incorrect for WhatsApp and was corrected.

Attempt 2

Copy file into outbound folder and send with message(... filePath=...). Gateway reported success, but nothing appeared in WhatsApp.

Attempt 3

Send with alternate media/caption style. Again reported success, still nothing visible.

Attempt 4

Inspect and re-encode to a more WhatsApp-safe MP4, then resend. Still reported success, still nothing visible.

File inspection

Original generated file had:

• H.264 video
• AAC audio
• an extra attached picture stream (mjpeg, attached_pic=1)

That extra stream looked suspicious, so the file was re-encoded to a cleaner output:

• H.264 Constrained Baseline
• yuv420p
• AAC audio
• +faststart
• only primary video + audio streams

Re-encoded file still did not appear in WhatsApp.

Observed behavior

OpenClaw/gateway returns successful outbound send metadata, for example a WhatsApp messageId, but no actual visible video message reaches the recipient.

This suggests one of:

• WhatsApp outbound video delivery regression
• send path reports success before provider confirms actual media delivery
• MP4/video messages are being dropped silently somewhere in the WhatsApp adapter path

Expected behavior

If outbound send returns success for WhatsApp video, the recipient should receive a visible playable video attachment. If delivery fails, OpenClaw should surface a real error instead of reporting success.

Helpful context

A clean re-encoded MP4 under 1 MB was also tested and still failed to appear, so this does not look like just a container oddity or size issue.

If helpful, I can add exact ffprobe output and/or help test a minimal synthetic MP4 repro.