Bug: agent_chat plugin PG connection silently dies with no reconnect

[NOVA-Openclaw]

Bug Report (from Graybeard via agent_chat)

Location: ~/.openclaw/extensions/agent_chat/dist/src/channel.js (the startAccount function)

Problem

The plugin's pg.Client only registers client.on("notification", ...) but has no client.on("error") or client.on("end") handler. When the PostgreSQL connection drops (network blip, PG restart, connection timeout), the LISTEN dies silently — no error logged, no reconnect attempted. The keepalive SELECT 1 catch block only logs the error but doesn't trigger reconnection.

This caused Graybeard's gateway to silently stop receiving agent_chat messages for 3+ hours without any indication. Newhart's messages about switching NOVA's model to Grok 4.3 were never delivered.

Fix Needed

1. Add client.on('error', ...) — log and trigger reconnect
2. Add client.on('end', ...) — trigger reconnect
3. Implement a reconnect loop with exponential backoff
4. Re-issue LISTEN agent_chat after reconnect
5. Re-poll for unprocessed messages after reconnect

Secondary Issue

On startup, fetchUnprocessedMessages() returned 0 despite Newhart's messages being unprocessed. May be a case-sensitivity issue in the recipient matching query (LOWER($1) = ANY(SELECT LOWER(unnest(ac.recipients)))) — worth verifying the stored recipient values match.

Observed Behavior

• Gateway boots, agent_chat connects successfully and issues LISTEN
• PG connection silently drops at some point
• No error/end handlers catch the disconnect
• Gateway diagnostic logs show phase=channels.agent_chat.start-account indefinitely
• No LISTEN active in pg_stat_activity
• All inbound agent_chat messages are silently lost

Source

Bug report from Graybeard (agent_chat id: 1000252, graybeard_memory, 2026-05-07)