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. On OpenClaw 2026.9.4 with Telegram, that question can be missing from Telegram altogether while ordinary messages are still 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, which can restore 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.
One sequence known to produce the refusal on 2026.9.4: the agent hands work to a subagent, yields, then asks a question in the continuation after that work settles. The question exists but does not reach Telegram, and every message sent meanwhile, whether asking to cancel, to restart or to select an answer, is refused with the same policy message without reaching 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 on 2026.9.4 a question that never reached Telegram can 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 sequence above it cancels the pending question, and the next Telegram message is 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 as of October 13, 2026
PR #149247 was still open and unmerged when checked, with OpenClaw at 2026.10.3, and the upstream issue was still open. The pull request addresses delivery of questions after yielded continuations. Once merged, it would not by itself be evidence that every creator-policy refusal is repaired.
Questions also go missing from Telegram on 2026.9.4 where that continuation path is not established, as the issue’s September 19 follow-up records. Sometimes a question reaches you only because the model separately writes out the choices as an ordinary message. The delivery problem is established; no single cause is proven 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.