Summary

When sending images via Telegram to the bot, compressed photos (sent as regular images via the photo picker) are intermittently silently dropped -- the agent never receives them. The message appears sent on the user's end but no image event reaches the session.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Open Telegram DM with an OpenClaw bot
2. Send a photo using the standard photo picker (compressed delivery)
3. Observe that the agent does not acknowledge or process the image

Expected Behavior

The image should be received by the agent and processed via the configured media/image model.

Actual Behavior

The photo is silently dropped. No error, no event, no acknowledgment. The agent continues as if no message was sent.

Workaround

Send the image as a document/file instead of a photo (long press the attachment icon → "File" instead of "Photo"). Uncompressed file delivery works reliably.

Environment

• OpenClaw: 2026.2.9
• Telegram plugin: bundled version
• Channel config: streamMode: "partial", dmPolicy: "pairing"
• Image processing: anthropic/claude-haiku-4-5

Notes

• Behavior is intermittent -- some compressed photos do arrive, others don't
• File/document delivery works 100% of the time
• May be related to Telegram's photo compression pipeline or how the plugin handles photo vs document message types
• Could be a race condition in the media download step for compressed photos