--channels flag prints "Listening for channel messages from …" but does not spawn the channel plugin process (v2.1.126)

Summary

Launching claude --channels plugin:telegram@claude-plugins-official reports "Listening for channel messages from: plugin:telegram@claude-plugins-official" in the UI, but no bun run … start child process is ever spawned. Other MCP servers in the same session (e.g. longterm-memory, telegram-mcp) spawn correctly. The result is a half-alive agent: outbound MCP tool calls (telegram - reply) work, inbound TG messages never reach the input loop.

Reproduction

1. Linux, claude-code v2.1.126.
2. claude --mcp-config <path> --channels plugin:telegram@claude-plugins-official --dangerously-skip-permissions
3. Observe banner says it's listening.
4. pstree -p <claude-pid> — no bun run --cwd …/external_plugins/telegram --shell=bun --silent start child.
5. Send a Telegram message — never delivered.

Expected

A bun run … start grandchild (which then runs bun server.ts) appears as a child of the claude process, as it does in long-running sessions started under earlier point-releases.

Confirmed not to be the cause

• No stale bot.pid lock at ~/.claude/channels/telegram/bot.pid.
• ~/.claude/channels/telegram/.env present with valid TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN.
• bun is on PATH and the plugin runs cleanly when invoked directly (bun server.ts polls Telegram and emits MCP notifications to stdout).
• No errors on stderr.

Workaround

Running the plugin manually (bun server.ts with stdin held open via fifo) confirms it works standalone — but its MCP notifications go to its stdout, which without claude as parent are not ingested.

Environment

• claude-code 2.1.126
• Linux 6.8.0-110-generic
• bun 1.x at ~/.bun/bin/bun
• Plugin: claude-plugins-official/external_plugins/telegram