Telegram plugin reports "connected" without polling (false positive)

Environment

• OpenClaw Version: 2026.4.25–2026.4.26
• Channel: Telegram
• OS: Ubuntu 24.04 / 26.04 LTS

Summary

After a VPS migration, the OpenClaw gateway logs showed:

[telegram] Telegram bot connected (polling enabled)

However, the bot was not actually polling or receiving messages. Gateway appeared healthy, but Telegram integration was silently non-functional.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Migrate OpenClaw to a new environment
2. Start gateway with Telegram plugin enabled
3. Observe logs: [telegram] Telegram bot connected
4. Send a message to the bot in Telegram → no response
5. Check getWebhookInfo via Telegram API:

   curl -s "https://api.telegram.org/bot<TOKEN>/getWebhookInfo" | jq

   Returns: "url": "" (no webhook), "has_custom_certificate": false

Root Cause Hypothesis

The Telegram plugin may report "connected" status based on:

• Successful bot token validation (API key works)
• Plugin initialization success

But not based on actual polling activity or webhook status.

Expected Behavior

Gateway logs should reflect actual Telegram integration state:

• "Telegram bot connected (polling active)" only when getUpdates is running
• "Telegram bot connected (webhook active)" only when webhook URL is set
• "Telegram bot initialized (not polling)" when token is valid but polling is disabled/failed

Actual Behavior

False positive: logs say "connected" but bot is non-functional.

Impact

• During a BLUE/GREEN migration, GREEN appeared healthy but wasn't receiving Telegram messages
• Discovery only happened during end-to-end testing (~1h after cutover attempt)
• Caused unnecessary debugging time (assumed config error, not plugin state mismatch)

Workaround

After gateway start, verify Telegram integration with:

# Option A: Send a test message to the bot
echo "Test message" | openclaw message send --channel telegram --target <chat_id>

# Option B: Check webhook status
curl -s "https://api.telegram.org/bot$(grep TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN ~/.openclaw/.env | cut -d= -f2)/getWebhookInfo" | jq '.result.url'
# Should be empty for polling, or a valid URL for webhook mode

Request

1. Add a diagnostic check in openclaw doctor to verify Telegram polling/webhook state
2. Update Telegram plugin logs to differentiate "initialized" vs "polling active"
3. Consider adding a heartbeat test message (e.g., send a message to self on startup to confirm bidirectional communication)

Evidence: Production incident during VPS migration (2026-04-28), documented in docs/dr/migration-lessons-2026-04-28.md