Description

Slack channel bindings configured with peer.kind: "group" silently fail to match public Slack channels. Messages arrive but are not routed to the bound agent — they fall through to the default agent instead. No warning or error is logged.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Configure a channel binding in openclaw.json:

{
  "agentId": "my-agent",
  "match": {
    "channel": "slack",
    "peer": {
      "kind": "group",
      "id": "C0AJMQWGPHN"
    }
  }
}

2. Post a message in the public Slack channel C0AJMQWGPHN
3. Observe that the message is handled by the default agent, not my-agent

Expected Behavior

Either:

• peer.kind: "group" should match public Slack channels (since they are group conversations), OR
• A config validation warning should be emitted indicating that Slack public channels require peer.kind: "channel"

Actual Behavior

The binding silently fails to match. No logs indicate the mismatch. The message falls through to the default/catch-all binding.

Workaround

Change peer.kind from "group" to "channel" for all Slack public channel bindings.

Environment

• OpenClaw version: 2026.2.12
• Channel: Slack (Socket Mode)
• OS: macOS (arm64)

Notes

This is especially confusing because Slack channels are group conversations conceptually. The peer.kind semantics are not documented for Slack specifically, so "group" is a reasonable first guess. A validation warning at config load time would prevent this silent failure.