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Telegram partial streaming is noisy and slow for tool-heavy agent turns #77267

Description

@joost-heijden

Summary

Telegram accounts configured with streaming.mode = "partial" can produce a very noisy and slow chat experience during tool-heavy turns. The user sees intermediate status/progress messages such as Process, Image Generation, and Exec updates that are not useful in normal Telegram usage.

Environment

  • OpenClaw: 2026.5.3-1
  • OS: Windows 11 / win32
  • Channel: Telegram direct chat
  • Config before workaround:
{
  "channels": {
    "telegram": {
      "streaming": { "mode": "partial" },
      "accounts": {
        "colorbestie": {
          "streaming": { "mode": "partial" }
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Observed behavior

During a normal image-generation request over Telegram, the chat showed multiple intermediate messages before the final answer, including status/tool cards such as:

Nautiling...
Process: ...

Nautiling...
Image Generation

Nautiling...
Exec: run python inline script ...
Exec: completed ...

This made Telegram feel extremely slow and cluttered. The user did not want or need these internal tool/status messages in the chat.

Local workaround

Setting Telegram streaming to off globally and per account stopped the noisy partial updates:

{
  "channels": {
    "telegram": {
      "streaming": { "mode": "off" },
      "accounts": {
        "colorbestie": { "streaming": { "mode": "off" } }
      }
    }
  }
}

Suggested improvement

Consider making Telegram default to final-only/no partial streaming, or adding a clearer doctor/setup recommendation for user-facing chat channels:

  • off or final-only as the default for Telegram DMs
  • keep partial as an explicit debug/power-user option
  • suppress tool lifecycle/status messages unless explicitly requested
  • provide a concise progress indicator that edits/deletes one status message instead of sending many separate messages

Expected behavior

For Telegram, normal agent turns should feel like a chat bot: minimal progress noise and a single useful final response, unless the user explicitly enables verbose/partial streaming.

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    P2Normal backlog priority with limited blast radius.clawsweeper:fix-shape-clearClawSweeper found a clear likely implementation shape for this issue.clawsweeper:needs-maintainer-reviewClawSweeper marked this issue as needing maintainer review before automation.clawsweeper:needs-product-decisionClawSweeper marked this issue as needing a product or behavior decision.clawsweeper:no-new-fix-prClawSweeper does not recommend queueing a new automated fix PR for this issue.clawsweeper:source-reproClawSweeper found a high-confidence source-level issue reproduction.impact:otherThis issue has meaningful maintainer-visible impact outside the owned taxonomy.issue-rating: 🦞 diamond lobsterVery strong issue quality with high-confidence source-level or clear reproduction.staleMarked as stale due to inactivity

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