Description

The Telegram extension requires grammy, @grammyjs/runner, and @grammyjs/transformer-throttler at runtime, but none are listed in package.json under dependencies, optionalDependencies, or peerDependencies. They're only present as runtime require() calls in bundled dist files.

This means every auto-update or brew upgrade wipes these packages, making the CLI completely unusable — all commands fail immediately with PluginLoadFailureError.

Version

OpenClaw 2026.3.31 (213a704), macOS 26.3.1 (arm64), node 25.8.2 → 25.9.0
Installed via pnpm global (/opt/homebrew/bin/openclaw)

Steps to Reproduce

1. Have Telegram configured with bot tokens
2. Wait for auto-update (or run brew upgrade)
3. Run any openclaw command

Expected

CLI works normally.

Actual

[plugins] telegram failed to load from /opt/homebrew/lib/node_modules/openclaw/dist/extensions/telegram/index.js: Error: Cannot find module 'grammy'
Require stack:
- /opt/homebrew/lib/node_modules/openclaw/dist/sticker-cache-BqQLBzvo.js

[openclaw] Failed to start CLI: PluginLoadFailureError: plugin load failed: telegram: Error: Cannot find module 'grammy'

CLI is completely unusable — can't even run openclaw status to diagnose.

Affected modules

Found via grep -roh "@grammyjs/[a-z-]*" dist/:

• grammy
• @grammyjs/runner
• @grammyjs/transformer-throttler
• @grammyjs/types (present transitively)

Workaround

cd /opt/homebrew/lib/node_modules/openclaw
npm install --no-save --userconfig /dev/null grammy @grammyjs/runner @grammyjs/transformer-throttler
openclaw gateway restart

Must re-run after every update.

Suggestions

1. Add grammy and @grammyjs/* packages to optionalDependencies so they survive reinstalls
2. Make extension load failures non-fatal for the CLI — a broken plugin shouldn't prevent openclaw status from running (the primary diagnostic tool). The amazon-bedrock extension already soft-fails; telegram should too.
3. Add a --skip-plugins or --safe-mode CLI flag for recovery scenarios

Related

Same class of issue affects amazon-bedrock (@aws-sdk/client-bedrock not in deps), but that one warns instead of crashing since it uses soft-fail.