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Channel receive paths follow one flow:
Use openclaw/plugin-sdk/channel-inbound for inbound event normalization, formatting, roots, and orchestration. Use openclaw/plugin-sdk/channel-outbound for native send, receipt, durable delivery, and live preview behavior.

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Core helpers

  • buildChannelInboundEventContext(...): projects normalized channel facts into the prompt/session context. Pass channel-owned sender/chat metadata through channelContext, which plugin hooks see as ctx.channelContext. Augment PluginHookChannelSenderContext or PluginHookChannelChatContext from this subpath for channel-specific fields.
  • runChannelInboundEvent(...): runs ingest, classify, preflight, resolve, record, dispatch, and finalize for one inbound platform event.
  • dispatchChannelInboundReply(...): records and dispatches an already assembled inbound reply with a delivery adapter.
Bundled/native channels that already receive the injected plugin runtime object can call the same helpers under runtime.channel.inbound.* instead of importing this subpath directly:
Assemble dispatchChannelInboundReply(...) inputs for compatibility dispatchers that keep platform delivery in the delivery adapter. New send paths should use message adapters and durable message helpers from channel-outbound instead.

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Migration

runtime.channel.turn.* runtime aliases were removed. Use:
  • runtime.channel.inbound.run(...) for raw inbound events.
  • runtime.channel.inbound.dispatchReply(...) for assembled reply contexts.
  • runtime.channel.inbound.buildContext(...) for inbound context payloads.
  • runtime.channel.inbound.runPreparedReply(...), deprecated, only for channel-owned prepared dispatch paths that already assemble their own dispatch closure.
New plugin code should not introduce turn-named channel APIs. Keep model or agent turn vocabulary inside agent/provider code; channel plugins use inbound, message, delivery, and reply terms.