Telegram polling can inherit a stale webhook registration when a deployment
switches transport modes, which leaves getUpdates idle even though the gateway
starts cleanly. Outbound send also treats Telegram retry_after responses as
terminal errors, so brief flood control can drop tool progress and replies.
Constraint: Keep the PR narrowly scoped to upstream/main Telegram adapter behavior
Rejected: Port OpenClaw's broader polling supervisor and offset persistence | too broad for an isolated fix PR
Confidence: high
Scope-risk: narrow
Reversibility: clean
Directive: Polling mode should clear webhook state before starting getUpdates, and send-path retry logic must distinguish flood control from timeouts
Tested: uv run --extra dev pytest tests/gateway/test_telegram_* -q
Not-tested: Live Telegram webhook-to-polling migration and real Bot API 429 behavior