DottaandPaperclip
23b2ceb0d1
## Thinking Path > - Paperclip is the open source app people use to manage AI agents for work. > - Connected Apps supply governed tools to those agents. > - Google services currently require separate connections or one broad request. > - Users need one account and control over which services it can access. > - A picker must change the OAuth request, not just the screen. > - This pull request binds selected services to consent and tool access. > - The benefit is simpler setup without enabling unselected tools. ## Linked Issues or Issue Description **Subsystem affected** Connections catalog, OAuth grants, and the MCP tool gateway. **Current behavior** Google setup uses separate service profiles. A combined request alone cannot express the user's choice before Google consent. Accumulated Google grants can be broader than a new request. **Proposed behavior** Offer one Workspace connection. Let users choose Gmail, Drive (including Docs, Sheets, and Slides), and Calendar. Start all three with read and write access. Let users disable groups or choose read-only access. Do not offer Chat, Contacts/directory, or cross-service Search in new setup. Bind selected scopes to durable OAuth state. Cap effective tool access to both the saved request and provider-reported consent. **Reason and benefit** Users can choose services without managing several accounts. Existing company, identity, agent, and action-policy controls remain in force. **Breaking changes** No database migration. Existing service connections and grants remain supported. New Workspace requests require the companion broker change in https://github.com/paperclipai/paperclip-cloud/pull/823. Old brokers reject narrowed requests safely. Related work: #14740 reduced Google scopes; #14774 introduced the earlier catalog hold. #15412 proposes a separate Gmail REST implementation. This maintainer-requested change extends the existing Connections and governed tool gateway paths. It does not replace them. ## What Changed - Add one Workspace catalog entry and a namespaced action catalog. Retain legacy definitions and saved accounts. - Use the approved production service picker in Apps and task-hosted setup. Keep dropdowns between names and toggles. Block empty selection. - Derive exact scopes from a closed registry. Default selection requests nine scopes. New requests exclude Chat, Contacts/directory, and Search scopes. - Bind selected scopes through managed and customer-owned OAuth state, callback, claim redemption, and refresh. - Cap accumulated Google grants to the saved selection. Recheck grant-specific permission at discovery, listing, and dispatch, including cached actions. - Restore the current subject's saved request on reconnect. Block on grant-load failure. Preserve draft selection on cancel and retry. Do not create an account on picker cancellation. - Preserve healthy services during partial outages, without combining grants across identities. Keep writes from being automatically replayed. - Preserve the original 21-scope legacy Workspace envelope contract as individual profiles evolve. - Add production-component Storybook stories, request validators, consent regression tests, and rollout guidance. Integrate the stories with the current feature catalog while preserving their IDs. ## Verification - Integrated branch merges current master and has no merge conflicts. - Full workspace build passed on the integrated checkout. - Token gates passed. Storybook catalog structure check passed: 283 files and 2,750 stories. - Final affected app suites: 914 passed. This includes 502 database-backed service/gateway tests and 412 UI/shared/validator/broker-handoff/governance tests. The production picker tests cover defaults, identity-specific reconnect, and failed-load recovery. - Full workspace typecheck passed after adding required current-master Storybook annotations. The final UI build also passed. - The full repository suite is still running and includes the two pre-fix retry assertions. Both were updated for the current gateway's explicit-retry contract and pass in the clean 502-test database run. No complete final-head full-suite pass is claimed. - The initial local database startup failure came from missing native-library symlinks in the fresh dependency install. The package's postinstall repair fixed it; the clean database-backed run has no skipped tests. - Broker focused suite: 47 passed, including real signed session → callback → claim redemption and wrong-scope rejection. Full broker suite before the final test-only follow-up: 3,562 passed, 103 skipped. - Real integrated-app walkthrough: Connectors → Workspace → customer-owned app → service picker. Verified all three defaults, empty-selection blocking, cancel/reopen with the selected read-only access preserved, preserved form values, and zero saved connections after cancel. Credentials were synthetic; no Google grant was made. - Current-head CI and Greptile review remain pending. Previous-head results are not treated as current. ## Risks Ship the companion broker before app instances send narrowed requests. Enable the intended Workspace client/profile separately on the target broker. This pull request does not deploy a tenant app, start a fleet rollout, alter Google Console, or upgrade the pinned reviewer stack. The three-group picker is not proof of live provider access. Before production, verify a real selected-service grant, reconnect, refresh, allowed reads/writes, and denied unselected actions on the isolated staging reviewer app. Google verification and preview enrollment remain separate requirements. Legacy service profiles stay compatible. New grant metadata keeps provider scope evidence separate from requested scope evidence. Missing or unsupported evidence fails closed. No scope union across user or organization grants is allowed. ## Model Used OpenAI Codex, GPT-5-based coding agent, with repository editing, code execution, and browser tools. The exact serving model ID and context-window size were not exposed. ## 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 described the issue in-PR following the relevant issue template - [x] I have not referenced internal/instance-local Paperclip issues or links - [x] My branch name describes the change and contains no internal issue ID - [ ] I have run all final-head 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 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 --------- 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, Asana, Sentry, PostHog, Neon, Superagent, Gauge, AgentMail, Telem.AI, iMessage Photon, and Enterpret. 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.
For Slack chat bot creation, installation, recovery, and live qualification, see Automatic Slack app setup.