Problem

Telegram messages are silently dropped. The gateway appears to receive and process the message, but no sendMessage API call is logged, and the user never receives a reply.

Steps to reproduce

Happened multiple times today (2026-05-11):

9:53 AM CST:

• Kyle sent message from Telegram (message_id 20778)
• Gateway received it (chat.history query logged)
• A reply was generated in the session
• No sendMessage record in logs
• Kyle never received the reply

10:24 AM CST:

• Kyle sent another message from Telegram
• Again, chat.history shows gateway received it
• No sendMessage in logs
• Message was dropped silently

Environment

• OpenClaw: 2026.5.7 (eeef486)
• Platform: macOS
• Channel: Telegram direct DM
• No event loop pressure detected at time of drop (no liveness warnings)
• No network errors in logs

Expected behavior

Every message sent from Telegram should receive a reply via sendMessage API, with the call logged.

Actual behavior

Gateway processes the message (chat.history query succeeds) but the reply is never sent via Telegram API. No error is logged. The user just never receives a reply.

Additional context

We observed the pre-connect vs post-connect network error handling issue described in #80362 and PR #80367, but our dropped messages occurred WITHOUT any "Network request for sendChatAction failed!" error in the logs. The drop is completely silent.

Could there be another code path that silently drops replies without any logging?