openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Plugin runtime resolver fails on bundled package entrypoints, causing Telegram channel crash loop [3 comments, 3 participants]

Summary

The Telegram channel can crash-loop during startup because OpenClaw's plugin/runtime loader does not appear to resolve bare package imports through normal package entrypoints for bundled runtime dependencies.

This is broader than a single json5 package issue. After working around json5, the same failure pattern appeared with tslog.

Environment

OpenClaw: 2026.4.29 (a448042)
Runtime cache: ~/.openclaw/plugin-runtime-deps/openclaw-2026.4.29-da6bdffc3d96
Node: 25.9.0
OS: macOS 26.4.1 arm64
Telegram account: configured and enabled

openclaw channels list showed:

Telegram default: configured, token=config, enabled

The gateway was able to start the Telegram provider for @agentkomersbot, but the provider exited before it could stay online.

Repro / observed behavior

On gateway startup, Telegram repeatedly started and immediately exited:

[telegram] [default] starting provider (@agentkomersbot)
[telegram] [default] auto-restart attempt ...

The initial crash was from a generated runtime file importing json5:

[telegram] [default] channel exited: Cannot find package 'json5' imported from /Users/agentkomers/.openclaw/plugin-runtime-deps/openclaw-2026.4.29-da6bdffc3d96/dist/redact-vz8FmIJK.js
Did you mean to import "json5/lib/index.js"?

After bypassing the json5 import, the next failure showed the same pattern for tslog:

[telegram] [default] channel exited: Cannot find package 'tslog' imported from /Users/agentkomers/.openclaw/plugin-runtime-deps/openclaw-2026.4.29-da6bdffc3d96/dist/logger-r45-Bhn_.js
Did you mean to import "tslog/cjs/index.js"?

Why this looks like a runtime resolver bug

Both packages have valid package entrypoints:

[email protected]
package.json main: lib/index.js
module: dist/index.mjs

[email protected]
package.json main: ./cjs/index.js
module: ./esm/index.js
exports["."].import: ./esm/index.js
exports["."].require: ./cjs/index.js

Generated OpenClaw runtime files import them as bare package imports:

import JSON5 from "json5";
import { Logger } from "tslog";

Those should resolve via package main/module/exports, but in the plugin runtime they fail before Telegram can finish startup.

Local workaround that unblocked Telegram

I patched the installed OpenClaw bundle and regenerated runtime cache locally.

For json5, importing explicit package subpaths was still flaky during runtime dependency staging, so I vendored the package ESM entrypoint into OpenClaw's dist folder and changed generated imports to a local file:

import JSON5 from "./json5-index.mjs";

For tslog, changing the generated import to the explicit ESM entrypoint worked:

import { Logger } from "../node_modules/tslog/esm/index.js";

After patching and restarting the gateway, Telegram moved past the dependency-resolution crash and logged:

[telegram] [default] starting provider
[telegram] menu text exceeded the conservative 5700-character payload budget; shortening descriptions to keep 97 commands visible.

Expected behavior

The plugin/runtime loader should resolve bare imports for bundled runtime deps according to package entrypoints, or the generated bundle should avoid bare imports for packages whose entrypoints are known.

Telegram startup should not crash-loop before reaching Telegram API/auth logic.

Actual behavior

The Telegram channel crash-looped during module loading due to unresolved bundled dependencies.

Possible fix

One of:

1. Fix the plugin runtime/Jiti/module loader so bare package imports honor package.json main/module/exports in the runtime dependency directory.
2. Generate explicit subpath imports for bundled dependencies such as json5 and tslog.
3. Ensure channel/plugin startup only begins after bundled runtime dependency staging is fully complete and visible to the module loader.

Related note: this may affect other generated runtime imports beyond Telegram; Telegram was just the channel that exposed the issue during startup.