Telegram plugin: inbound notifications/claude/channel silently dropped (outbound works)

Summary

Telegram plugin outbound reply tool works fine, but inbound messages never reach the session. notifications/claude/channel is silently dropped.

Environment

• macOS Darwin 24.6.0
• Claude Code 2.1.80 (Opus 4.6)
• telegram@claude-plugins-official v0.0.1
• Bun runtime

Steps to reproduce

1. Install Telegram plugin, configure bot token and access policy
2. Send outbound message via reply tool → works
3. Send inbound message from Telegram to bot → bot receives update, gate passes, typing fires, but message never appears in session

Debugging performed

• Bot API getMe: OK
• access.json: correct, user in allowlist
• No webhook conflict
• MCP server process running, stdio FDs connected via unix socket
• getUpdates returns empty — server is consuming updates
• Outbound reply/react/edit_message tools: all work
• Tried enabledPlugins in settings.json and --channels plugin:telegram@claude-plugins-official — neither delivers inbound notifications
• Restarted session multiple times — same result

Root cause

As identified in #36442: the CLI requires tagged --channels format (plugin:telegram@claude-plugins-official) but internally compares against the server's self-reported name (telegram). The comparison always fails, so notifications are silently skipped:

Channel notifications skipped: server telegram not in --channels list for this session

Using untagged --channels telegram is rejected by CLI with "entries must be tagged". No working combination exists.

Related issues

#36442, #36472, #36411, #36429, #36431, #36667, #36674