Bug type

Regression (worked before, now fails)

Beta release blocker

No

Summary

After upgrading to 5.2, TTS (text-to-speech) is non-functional. The microsoft speech
plugin shows as loaded and enabled in plugins list, but never appears in the gateway
startup plugin count, and TTS calls fail silently.

Steps to reproduce

1. Upgrade to 2026.5.2
2. Run: openclaw config set messages.tts.provider microsoft
3. Run: openclaw plugins enable microsoft
4. Restart gateway
5. Attempt to send a TTS voice message via Telegram
6. Observe TTS fails silently — no audio delivered

Expected behavior

After setting messages.tts.provider to "microsoft" and enabling the microsoft plugin,
TTS should work and voice messages should be delivered via Telegram.

Actual behavior

Gateway consistently starts with 8 plugins. The microsoft plugin never appears in the
startup plugin list regardless of configuration attempts:

[gateway] http server listening (8 plugins: bonjour, browser, device-pair,
file-transfer, memory-core, phone-control, talk-voice, telegram)

openclaw plugins list shows:

• id: "microsoft"
• speechProviderIds: ["microsoft"]
• status: "loaded"
• enabled: true
• dependency node-edge-tts: installed ✓

But the plugin is never activated at gateway startup.

OpenClaw version

2026.5.2 (8b2a6e5)

Operating system

Rocky Linux (x64) · node 24.14.1

Install method

openclaw update

Model

N/A — plugin activation issue

Provider / routing chain

N/A — plugin activation issue

Additional provider/model setup details

No response

Logs, screenshots, and evidence

[gateway] http server listening (8 plugins: bonjour, browser, device-pair, 
file-transfer, memory-core, phone-control, talk-voice, telegram; 4.8s)
[reload] config change detected; evaluating reload (messages.tts.provider)
[reload] config hot reload applied (messages.tts.provider)

Impact and severity

No response

Additional information

• messages.tts.provider was previously set to "edge" (worked before 5.2)
• doctor reported: messages.tts legacy provider "edge" → "microsoft" migration needed
• Also seeing stale config warn: plugins.entries.microsoft-speech: plugin not found
  (microsoft-speech appears to have been renamed to microsoft in 5.2)
• openclaw plugins enable microsoft completes successfully but has no effect on
  gateway startup
• Attempting to set plugins.entries.microsoft via config CLI gets auto-reverted
  by gateway on restart
• talk-voice plugin is loaded but has empty speechProviderIds: []
• tts-local-cli plugin has speechProviderIds: ["tts-local-cli", "cli"] but
  setting provider to "tts-local-cli" also did not restore TTS