Bug

OpenClaw's error pattern matching in pi-embedded-helpers scans assistant response text for billing-related keywords and incorrectly flags legitimate responses as billing errors.

Trigger Patterns

The ERROR_PATTERNS.billing check matches against:

• Exact strings: "payment required", "insufficient credits", "credit balance", "plans & billing"
• Regex: /\b402\b/
• Combo: "billing" + any of "upgrade", "credits", "payment", "plan"

Reproduction

1. Ask the agent to list issues from a project tracker (e.g. Linear) where issue titles contain phrases like "Show Credit Balance" or "only allow some models for some billing plans"
2. The assistant's response contains these phrases in the issue titles
3. isBillingErrorMessage() matches on the assistant text and replaces the entire response with: "⚠️ API provider returned a billing error — your API key has run out of credits or has an insufficient balance..."

Expected Behavior

The billing error detection should only apply to API error responses, not to the assistant's generated content. The assistant's reply text should never be scanned for these patterns.

Suggested Fix

Scope isBillingErrorMessage() to only check actual API/provider error payloads rather than scanning the full assistant message text.

Environment

• OpenClaw 2026.2.6-3
• Channel: Slack
• Model: claude-opus-4-6