DottaandPaperclip
d72389bee2
## Thinking Path > - Paperclip is the open source app people use to manage AI agents for work. > - The Apps gateway gives agents governed access to external tools. > - Browser Use Cloud can run browser work, but a tool result alone does not let a person watch or take over. > - A task needs a durable browser session, a visible viewer, and recorded costs. > - This pull request adds a Browser Use Cloud v4 connection and interactive browser tabs on tasks. > - People can follow the work, interact with the page, and retain the browser after the agent finishes. ## Linked Issues or Issue Description **Problem or motivation** Agents need governed access to Browser Use Cloud. People need to see and interact with the same browser from the task. A browser must remain available after a run finishes and appear at the correct point in the task feed. **Proposed solution** Add a native REST connection for the v4 API. Bind each session to its company, task, agent, and credential grant. Open its interactive viewer in the task side panel. Record provider costs as financial events. Use `browser-use-cloud` as the app and connector key. Keep its skill with the connector and deliver it only with authorized connection tools. **Alternatives considered** A v3 MCP connection would expose tools without the v4 lifecycle integration. An external viewer link would leave the task. A fixed viewer size would prevent pages from responding to changes in the task pane. **Roadmap alignment** This extends the governed Apps gateway and Connected Apps roadmap. It uses the existing task, grant, secret, approval, and financial records. The work was requested by the maintainer. A search found no duplicate Browser Use connector PR or issue. ## What Changed - Add the Browser Use Cloud app, brand asset, API-key connection, and profile settings under the `browser-use-cloud` key. - Bundle the `browser-use-cloud` skill with the connector. Keep it out of global `skills/` discovery. Deliver it only with authorized task/run connection tools. Remove retired connector skill keys from runtime overlays and preserve unrelated browser skills. - Expose seven v4 tools through the governed gateway and deliver them to native and CLI agents. - Persist sessions, browsers, runs, event and recovery cursors, shutdown leases, and cumulative cost accounting. Recover uncertain paid starts without replaying them. - Enforce task ownership, credential grants, approvals, revoked access, and budget limits. - Add interactive task browser tabs and compact chronological feed entries. Retain the viewer across tab switches and keep visible idle browsers open. - Add debounced automatic viewport fitting, standard size presets, and a viewer ownership lease. - Add lifecycle, authorization, accounting, viewport, UI, and Storybook coverage. - Add an idempotent database migration after the current master migration. Preserve deployed migration hashes. Migrate pre-release Cloud connection and financial keys without replacing grants, credentials, or browser history. - Document provider behavior, live acceptance results, and the lack of documented passkey forwarding. ## Verification - Full workspace typecheck and production build pass on the updated branch. - Token gates, brand asset validation, module boundaries, and migration ordering pass. - Cloud tests verify global skill exclusion, authorized task/run delivery, unassigned agents, disabled connections, revocation, adapter isolation, and secret exclusion. The existing AgentMail connector assignment test also passes. - Migration replay runs twice against existing browser work and financial records. It preserves the records and avoids duplicate costs. - The focused provider, app catalog, OpenAPI, connection gateway, and migration regression suites pass. Recovery coverage includes lost replies, process crashes, provider rejection, and browser arrival acknowledgement. - All 54 checks pass on `2974b5f03641ad0cea3c941d8c02579316fa8c92`, including the full test matrix, browser E2E shards, build, typecheck, security, and release canary. Two optional Storybook jobs are skipped. - Greptile is 5/5 on the same commit, with zero unresolved review threads. The corrected review uses the actual master-to-head diff. - The local `pnpm test:run` started and was stopped after the full CI matrix passed. It did not complete locally; the full-suite result above comes from CI. - Earlier live acceptance used an isolated company with a capped provider credential. The agent opened paperclip.ing, the embedded viewer accepted navigation, and the same browser stayed available after completion and tab switches. - The local Storybook build passes. Stories cover the panel, footer, feed entries, settings, lifecycle failures, and viewport modes with an offline viewer fixture. ## Risks - Browser Use charges for hosted work. Provider caps and local budget checks reduce exposure; reported costs can arrive after work completes. - Viewer and CDP URLs grant access to the browser. The server validates and restricts them. They are excluded from agent results and durable event data. - Runtime resizing of v4 agent browsers uses a provider option confirmed by live testing but absent from its published agent schema. Resizing during a click may invalidate coordinates. Fixed presets remain available. - Viewport ownership is process-local and resets on restart. The lifecycle and accounting records remain in the database. - The original intermittent embedded-viewer stall has not been fully diagnosed. A bounded reconnect and active-session recovery cover the observed failure paths. - Live tests did not cover every revocation, approval, rate-limit, or restart case. Deterministic integration tests cover those paths. Passkey forwarding is not claimed. - Unknown create outcomes keep the credential available for cleanup. Run-list absence cannot prove a paid POST was rejected, so recovery stays pending until it can identify provider work. ## Model Used OpenAI Codex, GPT-6. Used reasoning, repository search, code execution, browser interaction, and test tools. The exact serving model ID and context-window size were not exposed in this session. ## 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>
Apps, Connections, and Integrations
Audience: internal engineers and product contributors working on integrations.
Start here when adding a provider: Connection authoring runbook. It is the canonical agent tutorial from provider research and protocol classification through manifest generation, branding, secrets, deterministic tests, real-account proof, and PR submission.
Runtime authentication: AI Connections.
Long-term memory: Experimental memory connectors.
Provider notes: Google Workspace, Gmail, PostHog, AgentMail, and iMessage Photon. Optional credential custody: Vercel Connect.
Post-read action: classify a new integration request, pick the right Paperclip layer to change, and avoid creating a parallel connection framework.
Decision Record
Board decisions from PAP-13211 make the Apps v2 substrate on the PAP-10341 branch canonical:
- D1: Apps v2 is the substrate. The active model is
tool_applications,tool_connections, catalog entries, profiles, policy rules, action requests, gateway sessions, audit events, and runtime slots. Connections v1 is retired as an implementation path. - D2: one credential authority per connection, brokered projections. The
default is the Paperclip instance vault: durable third-party credentials live
in
company_secretsas secret refs. A reviewed remote MCP method may instead opt in to Vercel Connect, in which case Vercel is the durable credential authority and Paperclip stores only the connector reference and redacted grant metadata. A connection must never mix those two sources. Adapter config, plugin config, harness credential files, and run environments may receive only brokered or projected credentials. - D3: the vocabulary and three-door IA are product law. The default product doors are Apps, Connections, and Review. Protocol and operator-depth concepts live behind Developer or Advanced surfaces.
- D4: unification lands on PAP-10341. Pages, CircleBack-style harness MCP OAuth, provider gallery work, and plugin-provided integrations converge on this branch instead of spawning new integration substrates.
- D5: inbound stays thin. External clients that call Paperclip use scoped Paperclip tokens and existing profiles/rules. They do not get a separate permission model.
Canonical Object Model
Use connection as the unifying noun. A connection is four things:
- A stored credential reference.
- A capability catalog.
- A governance layer.
- An audit trail.
Everything else is an axis on that object:
| Axis | Values | It answers |
|---|---|---|
| Direction | outbound, inbound | Who is the client? |
| Transport | MCP, native REST/OpenAPI, OAuth app install, webhook | How do bytes move? |
| Auth mode | OAuth, API key/PAT, app installation, none | What does the secret represent? |
| Credential owner | company, user, run | Whose identity acts? |
| Packaging | catalog entry, plugin, skill | How does it ship? |
MCP is a transport, not a product category. "Install the Discord app", "connect Google Drive", and "add an MCP endpoint" all produce governed connections with different transport/auth values.
Layer Stack
When you are unsure where a change belongs, place it on the narrowest layer that solves the problem:
| Layer | Owns | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Surface | user-facing Apps, Connections, Review, Developer/Advanced screens | gallery cards, setup wizard, review queue |
| Governance | profiles, bindings, allow/ask-first/block rules, quarantine, audit | read-only profile, ask-first write policy |
| Capability | action catalogs, schemas, risk classes, changed-tool review | search_issues, create_comment, schema hash |
| Credential | company_secrets, OAuth broker, credential resolver, token broker |
Slack bot token ref, Google OAuth refresh token ref |
| Identity | actor attribution and token exchange | board user, agent run, first-party service identity |
| Transport | how the external system is reached | remote HTTP MCP, local stdio, REST/OpenAPI, webhook |
The agent should not hold a durable provider credential. It should hold a Paperclip run/session token; the server or broker resolves the connection, checks governance, invokes the provider, and writes audit.
Identity vs. connections
Signing a user in and connecting a resource are different planes with different owners, different token profiles, and different homes. Do not merge them. This section is the public, connections-side statement of the identity model so connector implementers inherit the rule without depending on private identity-service documentation or re-deriving it.
| Plane | Question | Lives where | Token profile |
|---|---|---|---|
| P1. Sign-in methods | Who are you? | paperclip-id (id.paperclip.ing → Account) |
Minimal-scope provider tokens (openid email profile), used once to authenticate, encrypted at rest, never exported |
| P2. Connections (Apps) | What may your agents touch? | Paperclip App instances (tool_connections), acquired via the connect broker for hosted + self-hosted |
Rich-scope, long-lived resource tokens in the instance's encrypted vault; per-agent grants; risk-tier policy defaults |
| P3. Login with Paperclip | Who may authenticate against us? | paperclip-id OIDC provider + DB-backed client registry |
Our ES256 ID/access tokens issued by us to registered RPs (instances, the broker, future third parties) |
Everything in doc/connections/ — the First-30 matrix,
the connection authoring runbook, and the connect-broker work —
lives on plane P2. It never acquires, stores, or brokers a P1 sign-in token.
The standing rule (D7)
Adopted as a standing rule (decision D7) with the identity-model plan. State it verbatim in any P2 design so the app-store work cannot drift into merging the planes:
Sign-in tokens are never reused as resource tokens; id.paperclip.ing never stores resource tokens; no connections hub on the ID service.
P2 tokens flow broker → instance vault as pass-through only; the id.paperclip.ing Account page therefore must not grow a "Connections" hub. The reasons to hold the planes apart (from the plan §3):
- Scope discipline. Sign-in wants the narrowest grant; connections want deliberately broad ones. One button that does both is how you grant repo access just to log in.
- Blast radius. id.paperclip.ing holding every customer's Vercel/Slack/GitHub resource tokens would make it the single juiciest target in the fleet; the broker is intentionally pass-through.
- Self-hosted symmetry. Instances own their vaults, so self-hosters don't depend on our uptime to use their own connections.
- Legibility. Sign-in and connections answer different user questions, and every product we benchmarked (Vercel, Railway, GitHub, Google) keeps them on separate pages with separate names.
The explicit Vercel Connect exception does not change D7 or merge P1 and P2.
The operator chooses Vercel as the P2 credential authority for an individual
connection. id.paperclip.ing is not involved, and neither sign-in tokens nor
provider tokens pass through it. The deployment's Vercel access token or
workload OIDC identity is bootstrap authority for that external vault, not a
provider resource credential.
Naming alignment
Use the surface-correct name for each plane; they intentionally differ:
| Surface | Plane | Name to use |
|---|---|---|
| Paperclip App instances | P2 | "Connections" |
| id.paperclip.ing Account | P1 | "Ways to sign in" |
| id.paperclip.ing admin | P3 | "OIDC clients" (until the app store productizes it) |
Packaging Rule
Default to a catalog entry when an integration can be described as metadata: manifest, auth config, action catalog, resource filters, and policy defaults.
Use a plugin only when the integration needs product code such as custom UI pages, its own tables, workers, migrations, routines, or specialized ingestion. A plugin may bundle catalog entries, but it must not bypass the connection, profile, policy, credential, and audit model.
Use a skill for agent instructions. Skills may use connections; they must not own durable tokens.
Canonical Docs
- Glossary defines product and internal terms.
- Identity vs. connections is the public statement of the P1/P2/P3 boundary and the D7 standing rule for connections work.
- Security threat model harvests the keeper from PAP-2359 and maps it onto Apps v2.
- First-30 matrix harvests the keeper from PAP-2432 and is the source matrix for connector playbook work.
- Connecting any remote MCP server is the baseline: how an operator connects a standards-compliant remote MCP endpoint with no Paperclip code change, and how sign-in resolves a client.
- Connection authoring runbook is the one end-to-end, agent-executable guide for adding a vendor as a catalog entry on Apps v2: research, connection-type selection, OAuth/API-key/generated-URL setup, encrypted credential handling, branding, implementation, browser and live-provider testing, verification, and PR submission.
- Vercel Connect operator guide documents the optional external credential source, deployment flags, runtime resolution, recovery, and smoke requirements.
- MCP access governance remains the operator runbook for the current gateway, profile, policy, approval, runtime, and audit APIs.
Migration Notes
Connections v1 contributed useful policy, UX, and rollout thinking, but its
implementation branch is no longer the target. When you see old tickets or code
using connections, connection_grants, or a provider-directory mental model,
translate the intent into Apps v2:
| Connections v1 intent | Apps v2 home |
|---|---|
| Provider directory | Apps gallery / tool_applications |
| Configured provider instance | Connection / tool_connections |
| Grant allowlist | Profiles, profile bindings, policies |
| Resource filters | Policy/profile conditions plus provider config |
| Tool broker | Tool gateway and runtime supervisor |
| Connection UX tail | Apps, Connections, Review, Developer/Advanced IA |
Do not add new work to the retired v1 branch. If an old ticket still describes a valid product gap, retarget it to an active Apps v2 issue or close it as superseded with a link to the replacement.