openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Telegram forum topic exec approval follow-up is delivered to general topic instead of the originating topic [2 comments, 1 participants]

Summary

When an exec approval request is triggered from a Telegram forum topic, the approval prompt can be delivered correctly to the approver's Telegram DM, but after the approval is granted, the follow-up result is delivered to the group's general topic (topic:1) instead of the originating forum topic.

In my case, the request originated from topic:345, but the post-approval result (Exec finished ...) was sent to topic:1 (general).

Environment

• OpenClaw version: 2026.3.31
• Channel: Telegram
• Chat type: group forum topic
• Approval delivery config used during testing:
  • channels.telegram.execApprovals.enabled: true
  • channels.telegram.execApprovals.approvers: ["<my Telegram user id>"]
  • channels.telegram.execApprovals.target: "both"
  • channels.telegram.capabilities.inlineButtons: "all"

Steps to reproduce

1. In a Telegram forum group, send a message from a non-general topic (for example topic:345) that triggers an exec approval.
2. Receive the approval prompt in Telegram DM.
3. Approve the request from Telegram DM.
4. Observe where the post-approval follow-up is delivered.

Expected behavior

The approval prompt and the post-approval follow-up should stay associated with the originating forum topic.

If the request originated from topic:345, the follow-up result should be delivered back to topic:345.

This also matches the current docs, which say Telegram forum topics preserve the topic for both the approval prompt and the post-approval follow-up.

Actual behavior

The approval prompt is received correctly in Telegram DM, but after approval:

• the follow-up result is delivered to the group's general topic (topic:1)
• not to the originating topic (topic:345)

In addition, Telegram often only receives the direct exec result text such as:

Exec finished (gateway id=..., session=..., code 0)
...

while the richer assistant follow-up is only visible in Web UI.

What I verified

I checked a few things locally to rule out simpler routing mistakes:

1. The originating Telegram session for topic:345 is stored correctly.

   • origin.threadId = 345
   • lastThreadId = 345

2. topic:1 and topic:345 are separate session entries, not aliases of the same session.

3. The tool calls that triggered these approval tests were recorded under the topic:345 session transcript, not only under topic:1.

4. Static inspection of the local OpenClaw code suggests that the normal session target resolution for:

   • sessionKey = agent:main:telegram:group:<chat-id>:topic:345
   • turnSourceThreadId = 345

   resolves to threadId = 345, not 1.

Because of that, this does not look like a generic Telegram forum-topic/session-modeling issue. It looks more like the originating topic is being lost somewhere in the exec approval request state or in the approval follow-up direct-delivery path.

Possibly relevant observations

The problem seems to affect the exec approval follow-up path specifically.

From local inspection, these code paths looked relevant:

• buildExecApprovalFollowupTarget(...)
• sendExecApprovalFollowup(...)
• sendExecApprovalFollowupResult(...)
• resolveExecApprovalSessionTarget(...)

I also noticed that the direct Telegram follow-up for exec approval uses the raw exec result text, while assistant-style follow-up appears to go through a separate path.

Impact

For Telegram forum groups, this makes exec approvals confusing to use because:

• approval is granted from DM
• follow-up appears in the wrong topic (general)
• assistant continuation may not show up in Telegram as expected

Question

Is this a known issue in the Telegram forum-topic routing for exec approval follow-ups?

If needed, I can provide sanitized logs and the exact local observations I used to narrow this down.