Bug type

Regression (worked before, now fails)

Beta release blocker

No

Summary

The bug fixed in #63450 / PR #63480 ("Gateway channel sidecar startup blocked by chat.history WS request, ~80–110 s delay since v2026.4.8", closed 2026-04-09) has returned in v2026.4.25 with a longer delay (~180 s instead of ~80–110 s). The original issue thread is locked to comments, so filing this as a separate regression report.

Symptom matches #63450's description nearly verbatim: between the starting channels and sidecars... log line and the moment channels (Browser control, Telegram provider, acpx runtime) actually start, the gateway sits silent for ~3 minutes. CLI WebSocket handshakes time out during the window, and any inbound Telegram message that arrives during it gets queued and replied to ~2 minutes after it lands.

Steps to reproduce

1. Install v2026.4.25 stable on Linux Debian 11 (Node 24.13.0 via NVM, npm-global install). Eager bundled-plugin postinstall (OPENCLAW_EAGER_BUNDLED_PLUGIN_DEPS=1) completed cleanly — ~/.openclaw/plugin-runtime-deps/openclaw-2026.4.25-<hash>/ is fully populated, so this is not on-demand plugin compilation.
2. Restart the gateway (systemctl --user restart openclaw-gateway on a user systemd setup).
3. Watch the gateway log. The ready (N plugins: ...; XX.Xs) line lands in ~10–12 s. The next non-noise log entry is ~3 minutes later.
4. During the ~3-minute window, run any openclaw CLI command (e.g. openclaw cron list). It hangs, and after 30 s the gateway log shows WARN handshake timeout conn=... peer=127.0.0.1:<ephemeral>.
5. Send a Telegram message to the bot during the window. The reply is sent ~2 minutes later (specifically, telegram sendMessage ok appears in the gateway log roughly 8 minutes after the restart).

Expected behavior

Per the resolution of #63450, channel sidecars should start within ~3 s of starting channels and sidecars, not ~3 minutes. PR #63480 fixed this regression at v4.8; v4.25 has reintroduced an equivalent or worse blocker.

Actual behavior — log evidence (two independent restarts on same machine)

Restart 1 — 2026-04-27 13:09:33Z

13:09:48.391  INFO  ready (10 plugins: acpx, active-memory, bonjour, browser, device-pair,
                    memory-core, memory-wiki, phone-control, talk-voice, telegram; 10.2s)
13:09:48.521  INFO  starting channels and sidecars...
13:09:48.733  INFO  loaded 4 internal hook handlers
                    ↑ ~3 min of silence ↑
13:12:53.xxx  WARN  handshake timeout conn=... peer=127.0.0.1:56754 -> 127.0.0.1:18789
13:12:59.xxx  INFO  Browser control listening on http://127.0.0.1:18791/ (auth=token)
13:12:59.xxx  INFO  [default] starting provider (@raywu07_bot)

Restart 2 — 2026-04-27 13:52:31Z

13:52:48.055  INFO  ready (10 plugins: ...; 11.6s)
13:52:48.190  INFO  starting channels and sidecars...
13:52:48.390  INFO  loaded 4 internal hook handlers
                    ↑ ~3 min of silence ↑
13:55:44.533  WARN  handshake timeout conn=... peer=127.0.0.1:32940 -> 127.0.0.1:18789
13:55:44.553  INFO  embedded acpx runtime backend registered
13:55:44.897  INFO  Browser control listening on http://127.0.0.1:18791/ (auth=token)
13:55:45.823  INFO  [default] starting provider (@raywu07_bot)
14:00:39.221  INFO  telegram sendMessage ok chat=... message=5593
                    ↑ first reply finally sent — 8 min after restart

Diagnostic notes

• Telegram channel itself is healthy throughout the window — getMe, getMyCommands, getWebhookInfo all respond fast (<300 ms) over the Bot API. The bot is reachable; the gateway just hasn't started its provider client yet.
• HTTP routes work fast — GET /health returns 200 in ~5 ms during the window. Only WebSocket handshakes (/__openclaw__/ws) hang.
• No plugin error in the ready line — all 10 plugins reported loaded successfully.
• OPENCLAW_EAGER_BUNDLED_PLUGIN_DEPS=1 does not help — the bundled-plugin install ran at upgrade time and the staged tree was complete by the time the gateway started. Whatever the channel-startup is waiting on, it's not on-disk plugin compilation.
• Possibly related secondary symptom: active-memory plugin's pre-reply sub-agent run elapses ~45 s for a configured timeoutMs: 15000. Documented separately on [Bug]: Stuck processing sessions are detected but never aborted — gateway requires external restart to recover #71127. If both symptoms share the same lock/queue holdup, fixing this regression should fix that secondary case too.

Suspected cause (informed guess)

The v2026.4.25 release notes touch the runtime-context / chat-history path in several places:

• "Heartbeat, cron, and exec wakeups submitted as transient runtime context (removed from visible transcripts)"
• "Sessions separate reset freshness from store updatedAt (heartbeat/cron/exec no longer prevent daily/idle resets)"
• "Embedded runtime context sent as hidden next-turn custom message (not visible user prompt)"
• "Doctor repairs 2026.4.24 transcripts with duplicated prompt-rewrite branches"

If any of these reintroduced a sync chat.history read on the channel-startup path (which was the root cause #63480 originally fixed by deferring), the symptom and timing would match exactly. Worth comparing the channel-startup hook order against the pre-#63480 codepath.

Environment

Mitigation suggestion

Two options worth considering, possibly in combination:

1. Restore fix(gateway): start channels before WebSocket handlers (#63450) #63480's defer behavior — whatever code path is again synchronously waiting on chat.history (or an equivalent runtime-context build) during channel startup should be deferred or made async, the same way fix(gateway): start channels before WebSocket handlers (#63450) #63480 originally addressed it.
2. Stop logging ready (...) until channels are actually up — the misleading ready log makes ops scripts (and humans) assume the gateway is usable when it isn't. Either delay the ready line by ~3 minutes (matches reality) or emit a separate available event after channels register.

Related

• [Bug]: [regression] Gateway channel sidecar startup blocked by chat.history WS request (~80s delay) since v2026.4.8 #63450 (closed by fix(gateway): start channels before WebSocket handlers (#63450) #63480 at v4.8 → regression returns at v4.25)
• [Bug]: Stuck processing sessions are detected but never aborted — gateway requires external restart to recover #71127 (stuck-session symptom — likely caused by the same blocker; v4.25 deterministic repro added in a comment there)
• CLI gateway handshake timeout too short for cold-start module compilation #51469 (CLI handshake timeout too short for cold-start — partially overlaps; their root cause is ESM compile, ours is the channel-startup blocker, but both manifest as CLI handshake timeout for the user)