Summary

Telegram outbound delivery drops or leaks reaction / media directives instead of turning them into native Telegram behavior.

In live Telegram use, replies like:

• [[react_to_current:🔥]]
• MEDIA:/path/to/file.gif

were being rendered as literal text in chat or partially dropped, even though the Telegram extension already has native support for:

• setMessageReaction
• sendAnimation
• sendPhoto

This turned out to be a core outbound normalization + Telegram adapter gap, not a local config problem.

User-visible symptoms

• Raw [[react_to_current:🔥]] leaked into Telegram instead of applying a reaction
• MEDIA: lines leaked into Telegram as plain text in some paths
• Reaction-only replies were treated as invalid (reply missing text/media)
• Telegram transport primitives worked when invoked directly, but normal assistant delivery still failed

Root cause

There were three related gaps:

1. Shared outbound payload normalization did not parse [[react...]] / [[react_to_current:...]] into structured channel data
2. Telegram reply delivery rejected reaction-only replies because it required text or media
3. Telegram outbound adapter did not preserve/execute channelData.telegram.reaction in sendPayload

Source areas involved

Likely source files:

• src/auto-reply/reply/reply-directives.ts
• src/infra/outbound/payloads.ts
• extensions/telegram/src/bot/delivery.replies.ts
• extensions/telegram/src/outbound-adapter.ts

Working fix outline

A local hotfix against the installed build worked in live Telegram and should be ported cleanly to source:

1) Parse reaction directives during reply normalization

• detect [[react:...]] and [[react_to_current:...]]
• strip the directive from visible text
• carry the value into channelData.telegram.reaction

2) Allow reaction-only Telegram replies

• if a reply has no text/media but does have channelData.telegram.reaction, do not reject it
• resolve the reaction target from replyToId
• call Telegram reaction transport before optional text/media delivery

3) Execute reaction channelData in outbound adapter

• in sendTelegramPayloadMessages(...), read channelData.telegram.reaction
• call reactMessageTelegram(...) when replyToMessageId is present
• allow reaction-only payloads to return a synthetic success result instead of forcing a text/media send

Validation performed

Confirmed in a live Telegram chat after patching the installed package:

• direct transport reaction test returned success
• direct GIF/media send returned success
• full assistant-lane reply using [[react_to_current:🔥]] plus MEDIA:<gif> worked correctly in the real chat
• user confirmed the live fix was working

Why this matters

This is not just a Telegram UX paper cut. It breaks a cross-surface control-directive contract:

• directives are parsed/consumed correctly in some lanes
• Telegram was leaking internal control syntax to end users

That makes reaction/GIF behavior unreliable and discourages use of otherwise-supported features.

Suggested acceptance criteria

• [[react_to_current:🔥]] in a Telegram reply applies a native Telegram reaction, not visible text
• reaction-only replies are accepted when a valid reply target exists
• sendPayload honors channelData.telegram.reaction
• payload normalization preserves reaction intent in structured channel data
• tests cover both normalization and Telegram adapter behavior