openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Discord bot connects but never receives MESSAGE_CREATE events; only slash interactions route through (regression after 2026.5.x) [2 comments, 3 participants]

Bug type

Regression (worked before, now fails)

Beta release blocker

No

Summary

After a config reload on 2026-05-03 ~19:24 EDT, the Discord bot stopped routing plain text messages and @mentions to any agent lane. The bot stays connected and slash commands work, but MESSAGE_CREATE events are never delivered to the gateway's message handler.

Steps to reproduce

1. Run OpenClaw 2026.5.3-1 (or 2026.5.2) with a Discord channel configured (single guild, single bot, ~30 channels routed to per-agent lanes).
2. Trigger a config reload that modifies plugins.installs.discord and related Discord keys.
3. After reload, send a plain text message in a dedicated agent channel (e.g., channel ID 1484462456066670768 mapped to opus-agent).
4. Observe that no entry appears in commands.log and the agent does not respond.
5. Also attempt an @mention in any channel — no commands.log entry is created.
6. Run openclaw channels status --probe — Discord shows as connected, intents:content=limited, audit ok.
7. Verify slash commands (/status, /healthcheck) still work ephemerally.
8. Run openclaw agent --agent opus-agent --message "ping" directly — agent responds correctly.

Expected behavior

Plain text messages sent in dedicated agent channels (requireMention: false, enabled: true) should create action:"new" entries in commands.log and trigger agent responses, as they did before 2026-05-03T10:38:03 (last known-good commands.log entry).

Actual behavior

• No action:"new" entries in commands.log since 2026-05-03T10:38:03; plain text messages and @mentions are completely silently dropped.
• openclaw channels status --probe reports Discord as connected, intents:content=limited, works, audit ok.
• Slash commands (/status, /healthcheck) work and the bot replies ephemerally.
• The lifecycle log shows [discord] client initialized as <ID>; awaiting gateway readiness but no corresponding "ready" event ever appears.
• openclaw channels resolve --channel discord 1484462456066670768 correctly resolves to opus-agent.
• Direct CLI invocation (openclaw agent --agent opus-agent --message "ping") works fine.
• Other agents (gemini, minimax, etc.) process turns from heartbeat/cron triggers; OpenRouter billing errors are visible in gateway.err.log, so the dispatch path is alive.
• gateway.err.log previously showed: [discord] gateway error: Error: Gateway heartbeat ACK timeout (one occurrence post-restart); [fetch-timeout] fetch timeout after 2500ms ... url=https://discord.com/api/v10/users/@me (one occurrence post-restart); repeated [diagnostic] long-running session errors from a stuck mistral-agent session (killed by restart).
• The 2026.5.3-1 update noted @openclaw/discord and @openclaw/brave-plugin were missing from ~/.openclaw/npm/node_modules/ and were freshly installed, but message-event delivery was still not restored after update + restart.

OpenClaw version

2026.5.3-1 (also reproduced on 2026.5.2)

Operating system

macOS, launchd-managed gateway (gui/501/ai.openclaw.gateway)

Install method

launchd-managed mac app (gui/501/ai.openclaw.gateway)

Model

openrouter/anthropic/claude-opus-4 (cost-capped, via opus-agent)

Provider / routing chain

Discord WS gateway -> openclaw gateway (launchd) -> OpenRouter -> anthropic/claude-opus-4

Additional provider/model setup details

No response

Logs, screenshots, and evidence

Impact and severity

Affected: Single guild Discord bot, ~30 agent channels, all message-based routing Severity: High — blocks all plain text and @mention routing to agents since 2026-05-03 Frequency: 100% reproducible after the config reload; persists through daemon restarts, full Mac reboot, token rotation, and upgrade to 2026.5.3-1 Consequence: All Discord message-based agent interactions silently fail; only slash commands and direct CLI invocations work

Additional information

Hypothesis: The gateway's GUILD_MESSAGE_CREATE event subscription/listener is never attached (or never fires) after a config reload in 2026.5.x. Slash-interaction dispatch works because it uses the separate interactions endpoint. The 2026.5.3-1 fix that re-added the discord plugin payload didn't restore the listener registration.

Config reload keys touched on 2026-05-03: plugins.installs.discord, plugins.installs.brave, plugins.entries.brave, plugins.entries.memory-lancedb, plugins.allow, skills.entries, plus a few others.

Attempted fixes (none worked):

1. openclaw daemon restart (multiple times)
2. Full Mac reboot
3. Bot token rotation in Developer Portal + openclaw channels add --channel discord --token <new>
4. Confirmed all Privileged Gateway Intents (Presence, Server Members, Message Content) toggled ON in Discord Developer Portal
5. openclaw doctor --fix
6. Update from 2026.5.2 → 2026.5.3-1 with fresh @openclaw/discord plugin install
7. Verified openclaw.json channels.discord.guilds.<guildId>.channels has channel ID with enabled: true, requireMention: false
8. Verified bindings[] maps channel ID → opus-agent
9. Verified agents.list[] contains opus-agent with correct agentDir and model
10. Verified main.subagents.allowAgents includes opus-agent

Workaround in use: openclaw agent --agent <id> --message "..." from CLI, and Discord slash commands.

Files available: ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json (+ .bak.* rotation), ~/.openclaw/logs/gateway.log, gateway.err.log, commands.log (last entry 2026-05-03T10:38), config-audit.jsonl, AGENT-AUDIT-MATRIX-2026-05-05.json