feat: per-chat routing, group prefix trigger, and conversation history

[morellid]

Summary

• Per-chat working directories: new PERSONAL_CHAT_ID/PERSONAL_CHAT_DIRECTORY and GROUP_CHAT_ID/GROUP_CHAT_DIRECTORY settings map specific Telegram chat IDs to dedicated Claude sessions and working directories. Unrecognised chats fall back to APPROVED_DIRECTORY.
• Session isolation per chat: all session state (claude_session_id, force_new_session, etc.) moved from context.user_data (per-user) to context.chat_data (per-chat), so each chat gets an independent Claude session even for the same user.
• Group trigger prefix + conversation history: in group/supergroup chats Claude is silent by default. Only messages starting with GROUP_TRIGGER_PREFIX (default: claude) — or the slash form /claude — produce a response. All other messages are stored in a rolling buffer (last 30 messages); when Claude is triggered the most recent 20 are prepended as context.

New files

• src/bot/features/chat_routing.py — get_working_directory() routing helper and GroupChatBuffer rolling history buffer

Changed files

• src/config/settings.py — 5 new optional fields + validators
• src/bot/orchestrator.py — uses chat_data for session state; group prefix filter in agentic_text, agentic_document, and _handle_agentic_media_message
• .env.example — documents the new settings

Test plan

• DM the bot → Claude uses PERSONAL_CHAT_DIRECTORY, session is independent from group
• Send a plain message in the group → no response, message stored in buffer
• Send claude <request> or /claude <request> in the group → Claude responds with recent conversation as context
• /new in DM resets only the DM session, group session unaffected
• No routing config set → behaviour identical to before (falls back to APPROVED_DIRECTORY, no group filtering)

[RichardAtCT]

Good concept — per-chat routing and group silencing are genuinely useful features. The implementation is mostly clean but there are a couple of blockers and several things worth addressing before merge.

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🔴 Blockers

1. No type hints in chat_routing.py

Violates the project's mypy strict + disallow_untyped_defs=true requirement. Every function needs full annotations:

def append(buffer: list[dict[str, str]], sender_name: str, text: str) -> None: ...
def format_history(messages: list[dict[str, str]]) -> str: ...
def get_working_directory(chat_id: int, settings: Settings) -> str: ...

2. No automated tests

The group trigger logic has meaningful branching (exact match, prefix match, slash variant, stripping, history injection) and get_working_directory has three paths. All of these are pure functions — trivially testable with pytest. Manual-only is not acceptable for a feature this size.

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🟡 Non-blocking issues

3. Redundant slice guard

# Current
context_messages = history[-HISTORY_CONTEXT_SIZE:] if len(history) > HISTORY_CONTEXT_SIZE else history
# Simplified — slice handles the short-list case natively
context_messages = history[-HISTORY_CONTEXT_SIZE:]

4. getattr fallback should be direct access

group_trigger_prefix is now a defined settings field — use self.settings.group_trigger_prefix directly instead of getattr(..., "claude").

5. Telegram slash commands with @botname suffix

In groups, Telegram often appends the bot username: /claude@mybotname. The current slash prefix logic won't match this form. Worth handling:

slash_variants = (slash_prefix + " ", slash_prefix + "@")

6. chat_data buffer persistence is implicit

Buffer is stored in chat_data which only persists across restarts if a Persistence object is configured. Worth a note in .env.example or a startup warning when no persistence is configured.

7. Prefer telegram constants

from telegram import Chat
if chat_type in (Chat.GROUP, Chat.SUPERGROUP):

8. GroupChatBuffer is a namespace, not a class

A class with only @staticmethod methods and no instance state is just a module with functions in a trench coat. Either give it real state (own the buffer) or make them module-level functions.

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✅ What's good

• Moving session state from user_data → chat_data is the right call for group isolation
• buffer[:-1] to exclude the triggering message from history context is a nice touch
• Blank-string → None validators in settings are solid defensive config handling
• Directory existence validation at startup catches misconfiguration early

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Summary: Fix the type hints and add at least basic unit tests for the pure functions in chat_routing.py and the trigger logic. The @botname slash issue is worth a fix too — it'll bite immediately in any real group deployment.

— Friday, AI assistant to @RichardAtCT (posted as @RichardAtCT — FridayOpenClawBot access pending)