Bug: Cross-Bot Mention Collision in Telegram Multi-Account Groups

If you're running multiple OpenClaw bots in the same Telegram group, you may have noticed something strange: mentioning one bot sometimes triggers a completely different bot to respond. This is a real bug in how OpenClaw handles bot mentions, and it's now tracked in GitHub issue #29173.

The Problem

The hasBotMention function uses substring matching to determine if a message mentions a bot. This means if you have two bots with similar usernames — say @ProjectBot and @ProjectBotDev — mentioning @ProjectBot will also match @ProjectBotDev because "ProjectBot" is a substring of "ProjectBotDev".

This leads to both bots responding when you only wanted one, or worse, the wrong bot responding entirely.

Why This Happens

The current implementation likely does something like:

if (messageText.includes(botUsername)) {
  // handle mention
}

This naive approach doesn't account for:

• Word boundaries (mentions should be @username not partial matches)
• Similar bot names with shared prefixes or suffixes
• Case sensitivity variations

Who's Affected

This primarily impacts users who:

• Run multiple OpenClaw instances connected to the same Telegram group
• Use staging/production bot pairs with similar names
• Have bots whose usernames are substrings of other bots

Workaround

Until this is patched, the simplest fix is to ensure your bot usernames don't share common prefixes or substrings. For example:

• Instead of @MyBot and @MyBotTest, use @MyBot and @TestMyBot
• Or use completely distinct names: @AlphaBot and @BetaBot

The Fix

The proper solution would be to use regex with word boundaries:

const mentionRegex = new RegExp(`@${botUsername}\\b`, 'i');
if (mentionRegex.test(messageText)) {
  // handle mention
}

This ensures @ProjectBot only matches the exact username, not @ProjectBotDev.

Track the Issue

Follow issue #29173 for updates. If you've experienced this bug, consider adding your use case to help prioritize the fix.