OpenClaw: "question answer caller policy does not match its creator"
Recover from a rejected answer or a Telegram question that never arrives. What the 2026.9.4 reports establish, and the status of the proposed delivery fix.
“The answer was not sent: question answer caller policy does not match its creator” means OpenClaw refused your message as an answer to a pending structured question. In our OpenClaw 2026.9.4 Telegram test, the question had never appeared in Telegram, yet ordinary messages were caught by its answer handler. Open the same conversation in the Control UI to inspect the question, or send /stop to abandon the active run. In the witnessed case, stopping it restored normal chat.
Why a message can be refused before the agent sees it
OpenClaw’s ask_user tool creates a question and waits. A typed channel reply can answer an active run’s question only when the reply’s permissions match its creator’s. That is different from sending an ordinary new message to the model.
On September 17, 2026, the agent handed work to a subagent, yielded, then asked a question in the continuation after that work settled. The question existed but did not reach Telegram. Requests to cancel, restart and select an answer were all refused with the same policy message; none reached the agent’s transcript. The upstream issue records the sequence.
Recover the conversation
If you want to answer, open the Control UI, select the affected conversation and inspect the question controls there. Do not assume an absent Telegram card means no question exists. The error itself points to those controls, and a later test on another 2026.9.4 installation confirmed that an invisible-to-Telegram question could be answered in the panel.
If you want to abandon the request, send:
/stopThis stops the active run; it is not merely dismissing a notification. In the September 17 incident it cancelled the pending question, and the next Telegram message was handled normally. Afterwards, check what work had already completed before asking for it again.
Waiting is not an answer to the question. The documented default question timeout is fifteen minutes, and an unanswered question can leave the agent continuing with its own judgment. If the decision matters, inspect or stop the run instead of assuming the silence means it has safely paused forever.
Fix status, checked September 19, 2026
PR #149247 was still open and unmerged when checked. It addresses delivery of questions after yielded continuations. That is not evidence that every creator-policy refusal is repaired, nor a reason to claim that 2026.9.5 contains this fix.
Two further 2026.9.4 observations, recorded in the issue’s September 19 follow-up, involved questions missing from Telegram on another installation. Their transcripts did not establish the same continuation path. One question reached the owner only because the model separately wrote out the choices as an ordinary message. Those sightings support the delivery problem, not a single proven cause for every missing question.
Not every silent Telegram chat is this error
If Telegram shows no policy refusal at all, use the broader agent-not-responding checks. If an administrative approval says it was cancelled when its run ended, that is a different, version-specific approval failure. Do not widen sender permissions or turn off approval protection to treat either symptom.