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Devin FoleyandPaperclip 9b71d03215 fix: recover interrupted native preparations and unblock upgrades (#20177)
## Thinking Path

> - Paperclip manages AI-agent companies and their work.
> - A native run prepares its workspace before a runner PID or
checkpoint exists.
> - A server crash can interrupt that stage and leave its controller on
another host.
> - Recovery needs a durable owner proof, a delivered recovery wake, and
the saved execution contract.
> - The old paths missed controller lease registration and boot proof,
skipped checkpoint-free preparations, and counted retained work as live
upgrade blockers.
> - This PR connects preparation to the existing controller lease and
recovery paths, and separates retained work from the upgrade census.
> - The result is bounded recovery without a second executor or loss of
saved work.

## Linked Issues or Issue Description

**What happened?**

A native preparation interrupted by a server crash could remain running
indefinitely with no runner PID or checkpoint. Native controller stamps
did not wake the shared instance lease. That lease was disabled on
volume-backed Railway services, and native takeover omitted the boot
binding needed for its cross-host proof. Scoped recovery selected
checkpoint-backed runs but skipped these preparations. The upgrade probe
then counted the retained row as current execution and could block every
later upgrade.

**Expected behavior**

Track the preparation's controller before a runner starts. Recover it
through the normal classifier after proving its owner stopped or fencing
that boot. Keep live or unprovable owners held. Deliver recovery wakes
to preparations without checkpoints. Preserve unresolved historical work
and report it separately from current execution during upgrade
observations.

**Steps to reproduce**

1. Save an observed native preparation with no runner process, result,
provider-start evidence or checkpoint.
2. Replace its controller with a process in another PID space. Let its
owner lease expire and send a scoped recovery wake.
3. Before this fix, recovery skips the checkpoint-free preparation or
cannot prove its foreign controller stopped. Upgrade readiness continues
to count that old row as a live blocker.

Related work: #18037, #19651, #19868, and #20168. The foreign-PID guard
from #19868 remains. The queued first-turn input fix from #20168 is
included through the current base.

## What Changed

- Register the existing instance lease when native execution and restart
claims are written. Keep passive identity reads free of ownership
effects. Keep that lease enabled on volume-backed Railway services
unless explicitly disabled.
- Preserve the existing PID/start-time proof within the same readable
PID space. Bind foreign or unknown-space takeover to its saved boot and
last write. A live lease or grace period keeps the run held with a
scheduled check. Repeated evidence waits preserve their timestamp.
- Include explicitly fenced, checkpoint-free preparations in the
existing finite recovery candidate inventory. Normal launch, checkpoint,
provider evidence and admission checks still decide whether work may
resume.
- Expose the existing board stop-confirmation operation for historical
foreign-host owners. Bind confirmation to the exact run, boot, PID,
process start and host. Reject changed ownership.
- Report narrowly defined old, unowned preparations as
`retainedBlockedRuns` outside the live upgrade census. Local executions,
pending admission, drain state, truncation and positive checkpoint proof
retain their barriers.
- Update the execution contract and add PostgreSQL, real-route, race and
preservation regressions.

## Verification

- Genuine red/green regressions cover the old upgrade census, missing
native lease registration, the volume-backed default, foreign-host
confirmation, and scoped recovery skipping checkpoint-free preparation.
Test bodies ran against real PostgreSQL before their corresponding
production changes.
- Combined verification before the final idle correction (head
`055be6c84d9`): **459 passed, 22 skipped, 11 files passed**. Covers
controller lease/identity, native restart classification and
integration, host confirmation, heartbeat recovery, instance route
authorization, upgrade readiness, and queued first-turn input. The
focused command used `pnpm exec vitest run` with those 11 suites and
`--maxWorkers=1 --no-file-parallelism`. The 22 skipped cases require the
Rust debug fake-Codex fixture, which was not built locally; the
real-process CI coverage must pass.
- `pnpm --filter @paperclipai/server typecheck`: passed on head
`055be6c84d9b058064daad0af71bb5d893ab9529`.
- Actual route proof uses the real heartbeat service and PostgreSQL.
Unauthorized access returns 403. The retained run and owner records
remain unchanged. Recovery integration admits one bootstrap claim across
two replacement controllers, keeps a live owner held, and preserves
local execution.
- `pnpm verify`: exit 2, requests broad CI because the execution
contract changed. Full local suite not run. Current-head CI must supply
broad coverage.
- Local source checkout on macOS ARM64, Node v25.6.1, pnpm 9.15.4. Tests
use isolated PostgreSQL. No live provider restart is claimed by those
fixtures.
- CI found an idle-query regression in the first version of the lease
wiring. Two focused PostgreSQL regressions reproduced the misplaced
identity-read notification and the missing claim notification. The fix
moves registration to actual ownership writes. `env -u npm_execpath pnpm
exec vitest run server/src/__tests__/maintenance-server-routes.test.ts
--maxWorkers=1 --no-file-parallelism`: **17 passed**, including 90 real
seconds and two qualified hourly windows with no extra idle queries. An
initial local setup attempt inherited npm metadata and did not run
tests; clearing that metadata selected the correct pnpm helper. Three
focused controller/native suites also passed **168 tests, 22
fixture-gated skips**. Server typecheck passed after the correction on
head `4a527326dcd5b3a9e286f0e4c3e761d3056af4d9`.
- The older CI server shard also exposed a same-space graceful-restart
regression. The new boot fallback had overridden local process-exit
proof. Seven suspension cases and a focused unit regression reproduced
it; the fix limits boot fallback to foreign or unknown PID spaces. Fresh
verification on `acf1065d98150210c1e227c7f3b05a1eb489730b`: **251
passed, 22 fixture-gated skips, 4 files passed**, including all **40**
graceful-restart suspension tests. Server typecheck passed. The local
regression failed before this correction, and the same-space and
foreign-space paths pass together after it.
- Current-head CI completed successfully on
`acf1065d98150210c1e227c7f3b05a1eb489730b` (run 42568109784). Greptile
reviewed that exact head at 5/5 with no unresolved review threads.
- Secret and private-data scans passed. No workflow, lockfile or
migration changes.

## Risks

- The instance lease now applies to volume-backed Railway services. Its
existing 30-second renewal, quiescence, grace and self-fence behavior
applies while work is held. Idle servers retain the existing no-query
behavior. An explicit `PAPERCLIP_CONTROLLER_INSTANCE_LEASE=off` remains
available.
- A controller lease proves only the server owner's state. It does not
prove an agent process stopped or authorize replay, resource release or
volume removal. The existing classifier and provider/runner checks
remain responsible for those decisions.
- Previous-release records keep their shape and saved state. A missing
boot lease stays unprovable and requires the scoped stop-confirmation
path. A changed confirmation target is rejected.
- The upgrade observation does not recover a held task by itself. Source
tests do not qualify a hosted replacement. Deployment and the affected
task's useful result must be verified separately.
- This repairs recovery after a crash; it does not claim to identify or
fix every source of heap exhaustion.

## Model Used

OpenAI `gpt-6.1-sol`, xhigh reasoning effort, through Codex in T3 Code,
with repository, shell, and GitHub tools. Context window size is not
exposed by the runtime.

## Checklist

- [x] I have included a thinking path that traces from project context
to this change
- [x] I have specified the model used (with version and capability
details)
- [x] I have checked ROADMAP.md and confirmed this PR does not duplicate
planned core work
- [x] I have searched GitHub for duplicate or related PRs and linked
them above
- [x] I have either (a) linked existing issues with `Fixes: #` / `Closes
#` / `Refs #` OR (b) described the issue in-PR following the relevant
issue template
- [x] I have not referenced internal/instance-local Paperclip issues or
links (only public GitHub `#NNN` / `github.com/paperclipai/paperclip`
URLs)
- [x] My branch name describes the change (e.g. `docs/...`, `fix/...`)
and contains no internal Paperclip ticket id or instance-derived details
- [x] I have run tests locally and they pass
- [x] I have added or updated tests where applicable
- [x] I have updated relevant documentation to reflect my changes
- [x] I have considered and documented any risks above
- [x] All Paperclip CI gates are green
- [x] Greptile is 5/5 with no open P2s, recommendations, or follow-ups
- [x] I will address all Greptile and reviewer comments before
requesting merge

---------

Co-authored-by: Paperclip <noreply@paperclip.ing>
2026-11-08 21:53:13 -08:00
DottaandClaude Opus 5.5 e8a3f1f6f2 feat(recovery): prove a replaced container's records gone through a fenced controller epoch (#20054)
## Thinking Path

> - Paperclip is the open source app people use to manage AI agents for
work
> - After a restart, the control plane settles in-progress records
(leases, claims, intents) only once it proves their owner process is
gone
> - The proof compares host and PID space, so a stamp from a replaced
container or a rebooted machine stays unprovable forever, and its
records never settle
> - Self-hosted users on Docker, Kubernetes and Fly hit this on every
redeploy; a Railway deployment with an exclusive volume is covered by
`deployment_replaced` (#20026)
> - This pull request adds a fenced controller epoch: each boot holds a
database lease, and an expired boot is fenced so its records can be
proven gone
> - The benefit is that work stranded by a replaced container is
recovered, without keeping an idle database awake

## Linked Issues or Issue Description

Follow-up to #20026 and the Phase 2 durable-ownership data. Related:
#19965 (owner stamps), #19883 (process space). No duplicate PR was
found.

**What happened?**

A record stamped by a server process in another container reports
`different_process_space`. A dead PID elsewhere is never proof, so the
record stays `unprovable` and is never settled. Every redeploy of a
self-hosted container leaves such records behind.

**Expected behavior**

A record owned by a server boot that was replaced (stopped cleanly, or
lost its lease and was fenced) is proven gone and settled exactly once.
A live boot's records stay with it. An idle server issues no recurring
queries.

**Steps to reproduce**

1. Run Paperclip in a container and start work, so an environment lease
is stamped by that boot.
2. Replace the container. The new container has a new PID namespace.
3. The ownership reconciler reports `different_process_space`
(unprovable) for the old lease, forever.

**Paperclip version or commit**

`master` before this PR.

## What Changed

- New `controller_instances` table (migration 0449): boot id, epoch
(bigserial), process space, pid, a lease on the database clock,
`fenced_at` / `fenced_by_epoch`, `stopped_at`.
- `controller-instance-lease.ts`, registered with the shared
delivery-work coordinator (`controller-instance-lease` queue, runs
during drain):
- **Holds work → renews; idle → silent.** One upsert creates the row on
first use and extends the lease only if the boot holds work: a stamp
within the last 90 s, or a stamp whose ownership write may still be
pending (held until the server's tracked work settles, capped at 10
minutes; a renewal that sees some other held record does not clear it,
so a slow ownership write cannot be outlived), or an in-progress record
held by its boot id. Those records are active environment leases,
in-flight cleanup claims, sandbox creation intents, workspace finalize
attempts, agent lifecycle steps, native finalizer and cleanup leases
(`lease_holder` bound to the token), open native coordinator claims, and
running legacy runs. Renewal runs every 30 s while the boot holds work.
When it finds none, the lease lapses and the worker sleeps until the
next stamp (`onControllerStamp`).
- **No idle trailing statements.** When the server's last tracked work
settles, the worker re-checks holdings at once, at most every 5 s (the
rate limit also absorbs the worker's own run). So the last check happens
with the work, not 30 s later.
- **Quiesce, don't crash.** Each renewal has a 10 s bound. A failed or
timed-out renewal applies an internal task drain, so no new work is
dispatched. A recovered renewal resumes. The boot exits only after 60 s
of failure (counted from the first failed attempt's start) while it
still holds work, or at once when it finds itself fenced.
- **Fence on demand, by a newer epoch.** For a stamp from another host
or PID space, the prover reads that boot's row:
    - `stopped` or `fenced`: gone.
    - live lease: alive.
- otherwise, the boot's last sign of life is the later of its lease
expiry and the record's last write plus the TTL. Within 30 s of that,
the owner stays `alive` (`controller_lease_grace`), so the settle watch
keeps rechecking. After that, the prover fences the boot, but only with
a lease row of its own (created on demand) and only an older epoch.
  - A graceful shutdown records `stopped_at`.
- A reconciliation pass that settles nothing (`record: false` or
`settle: false`) never fences and never creates the boot's row.
- `owner-proof.ts`: these proofs apply only to server-held records. A
stamp with a recorded process group stays unprovable, because agent
processes can outlive their server. The reconciler passes each record's
`updatedAt` to the proof.
- `task-admission.ts`:
- the quiesce drain never replaces an operator's drain, and has no idle
owner, so HTTP stays open;
- a `subscribeIdleWorkSettled` hook fires when the last tracked work
finishes.
- Off on a Railway deployment with an exclusive volume (it has its own
replacement proof). `PAPERCLIP_CONTROLLER_INSTANCE_LEASE=on|off`
overrides this. A stateless Railway service keeps the lease. A server
without its own lease row never fences.
- `maintenance-server-routes.test.ts`: in the post-run quiet window, the
lease may check once more that the run's records were released. The test
now excludes those statements, then asserts that the lease issues
nothing in a further window.
- Docs: `doc/execution-semantics.md`; the Phase 2 data doc records the
two known gaps.

## Verification

- `controller-instance-lease.test.ts` (15 cases):
- a replaced container with all Railway variables empty is fenced and
settled exactly once over two passes;
  - a live lease is alive;
- an owner in grace, and work written after an idle lapse, stay alive
and watched;
  - an older epoch never fences a newer one;
- no fencing without its own lease row (off or unregistered), and an
idle prover creates its row on demand;
  - a stopped boot is gone;
  - process-group stamps stay unprovable;
- idle issues zero statements, and one upsert renews only while records
are held;
  - **a 45 s outage:** quiesced, no exit, resumes;
- **a renewal that never answers:** bounded, and the boot exits on time;
- **a 70 s outage:** exits at 60–65 s, and the successor recovers the
work exactly once;
  - fenced: stops;
  - the settle re-check;
- graceful stop; off on a volume-exclusive Railway deployment, on for a
stateless one, and the on/off override;
  - a running legacy run keeps the lease live.
- Red, with the proof's instance check removed: the replaced-container,
live, stopped and successor cases fail.
- Wider: task-drain, idle-sleep, idle-local-work, owner-proof and
ownership suites, plus the maintenance quiet-window tests. Server
low-memory typecheck is clean.

## Risks

- **Clock skew.** The proof compares a record's `updatedAt` (often the
writer's clock) with the lease (database clock). The 30 s grace absorbs
ordinary skew.
- **A new exit path exists.** A server whose database is unreachable for
more than 60 s while it holds work now exits, after first quiescing.
This is the intended safety backstop.
- **Bounded trailing activity.** A lease that holds work issues one
statement every 30 s, plus at most one check when its work settles. An
idle server issues none.
- **Boots from before this release** have no row, and their records stay
unprovable. The board "mark owner gone" action for those follows in a
separate PR.

## Model Used

- Anthropic Claude Opus 5.5 (`claude-opus-5-5`), via Claude Code with
tool use.

## Checklist

- [x] I have included a thinking path that traces from project context
to this change
- [x] I have specified the model used (with version and capability
details)
- [x] I have checked ROADMAP.md and confirmed this PR does not duplicate
planned core work
- [x] I have searched GitHub for duplicate or related PRs and linked
them above
- [x] I have either (a) linked existing issues with `Fixes: #` / `Closes
#` / `Refs #` OR (b) described the issue in-PR following the relevant
issue template
- [x] I have not referenced internal/instance-local Paperclip issues or
links (only public GitHub `#NNN` / `github.com/paperclipai/paperclip`
URLs)
- [x] My branch name describes the change (e.g. `docs/...`, `fix/...`)
and contains no internal Paperclip ticket id or instance-derived details
- [x] I have run tests locally and they pass
- [x] I have added or updated tests where applicable
- [x] I have updated relevant documentation to reflect my changes
- [x] I have considered and documented any risks above
- [ ] All Paperclip CI gates are green
- [ ] Greptile is 5/5 with no open P2s, recommendations, or follow-ups
- [x] I will address all Greptile and reviewer comments before
requesting merge

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-11-08 11:06:32 -06:00