Bug Description

Cron jobs using delivery.mode: "announce" with an explicit to target fail with cron announce delivery failed. Jobs with bare announce (no to) succeed.

This appears to be a regression or incomplete fix from #23841 which claims to "route text-only announce jobs with explicit thread/topic targets through direct outbound delivery."

Reproduction

1. Create a cron job with announce delivery targeting a Telegram topic:

{
  "delivery": {
    "mode": "announce",
    "channel": "telegram",
    "to": "telegram:-1003868842628:topic:13"
  }
}

2. Also fails with Slack channel targets:

{
  "delivery": {
    "mode": "announce",
    "channel": "slack",
    "to": "C0AE3CYHVTK"
  }
}

3. Cron job runs successfully (agent completes), but delivery step fails.

Working case

Bare announce with no to works fine:

{
  "delivery": {
    "mode": "announce"
  }
}

Environment

• Version: 2026.2.22 (5bb58e5)
• OS: macOS (Darwin 25.3.0, arm64)
• Node: v25.6.0
• Gateway: loopback, token auth
• Channels: Telegram (forum group with topics), Slack (socket mode)

Error from cron state

{
  "lastStatus": "error",
  "lastError": "cron announce delivery failed",
  "consecutiveErrors": 1
}

Workaround

Set delivery.mode: "none" and have the agent send messages itself via the message tool in the cron payload prompt. This is what we're doing for all affected crons.

Affected crons (4 total)

• Telegram topic delivery (3 crons): all fail with cron announce delivery failed
• Slack channel delivery (1 cron): same error

Related

• fix: use direct delivery for cron announce to forum topics #23841 (claimed fix for this exact scenario)