Cron: jobs run but Telegram announce delivery fails (no notification sent)

Symptoms

• Your cron jobs execute normally (facts extraction, summaries, etc.).
• But jobs configured with delivery announce to Telegram do not arrive.
• You may see an error state like cron announce delivery failed in cron run status / UI.
• Manual Telegram messaging still works (for example via the message tool or direct Bot API tests).

Cause

OpenClaw cron has multiple output paths:

• delivery.mode = "announce": cron delivers the run’s outbound payloads directly via the channel adapters.
• delivery.mode = "none": cron does not deliver; you can send messages yourself inside the run.
• delivery.mode = "webhook": cron posts the finished event to your endpoint.

When only announce fails, it usually indicates a problem in the announce delivery pipeline (target parsing/routing, channel adapter send, or a regression in the cron announce path), not a general Telegram connectivity problem.

Fix

1) Fastest workaround: turn off announce and send via message inside the job

Edit the job to disable announce:

openclaw cron edit <job-id> --no-deliver

Then update your cron prompt to send the message explicitly (example idea):

• Generate the content
• Call message.send to your Telegram target

Why this helps: docs note that announce delivery suppresses messaging tool sends for the run. With delivery.mode = "none", you regain full control of outbound messages.

2) If you want delivery without chat adapters: use webhook mode

If you have an HTTP endpoint that forwards to Telegram (or logs results), switch the job:

openclaw cron edit <job-id> --webhook --to "https://example.com/openclaw/cron"

3) Capture the failing announce error from gateway logs

On the gateway host:

openclaw logs --follow | rg -i "cron|announce|telegram|deliver|sendMessage|error"

And verify Telegram is configured and probe-able:

openclaw channels status --probe telegram

If you can paste the announce-related error lines (redacting tokens), it will usually show whether this is a target parsing issue or an adapter send failure.

Verify

• Wait for the next scheduled run
• Confirm one of:
  • The job delivers via your explicit message.send path (with --no-deliver), or
  • The webhook endpoint receives the payload (with delivery.mode = "webhook")

Related

• CoClaw: Cron runs but never fire (different symptom): /troubleshooting/solutions/cron-jobs-not-firing-next-run-advances/
• CoClaw: Cron announce delivers only a summary (different symptom): /troubleshooting/solutions/cron-announce-sends-summary-instead-of-full-output/