PaperClipAI/tests/runner-e2e/PRODUCT-JOURNEYS.md

Product journeys across deployments

product-journeys is an explicit Product E2E selection. Deployment is separate from the local / daytona execution environment. Existing selectors, execution IDs, and the --all matrix keep their historical meaning. These are scripted browser journeys with API setup and independent assertions; they are not strict browser-only “use as a user” discovery.

Concept	Owner
Journey	User actions, prerequisites, assertions, feature-map associations
Target provider	Authentication, deployed identity, configuration, acquisition, cleanup
Setup recipe	Resolve requested company/user/task capabilities through the fixture registry
Campaign	Explicit journey order, target, model profile, limits, lifetime

Shared code is in product-journeys/. Cloud fleet operations, email-code login, private state, and trusted CI live in the private paperclip-cloud repository. The TargetProvider version-1 interface is defined in product-journeys/types.ts. Journeys receive a ready browser, company-scoped API, IDs, and capabilities. They never start a server or depend on a tenant filesystem.

Selections

Journey	Required starting state	Observed outcome
task-create	Company and signed-in board user	Create a task through the shared production composer, assign it to yourself, reopen and reload it, verify the saved prompt and no agent work
ask-question	Company, configured agent capability, positive model allowance and exactly one permitted work run	Reuse the existing cross-model Ask question prompt; require one successful run with matching company/task/agent/model/environment, one saved exact answer, and visible readback after reload
task-properties	Company, signed-in board user, task-write capability, prepared run-owned backlog task	Open its properties, assign it to the signed-in user, reload, check both UI and saved assignment; verify no agent run
cloud-onboarding	Signed-in admitted Cloud account; fresh workspace; qualified bounded provider route	Create workspace in the portal, connect API key and native Codex agent in the wizard, complete a task, download and independently check its artifact

Supported acquisitions are managed self-hosted (local), registered existing Cloud (local or daytona when present), and new Cloud. New Cloud must start with onboarding. Its context can then satisfy the identical task-properties journey without another setup. A recipe reports startingState: recipe; reusing successful onboarding reports onboarding. Preconfigured state is never counted as onboarding coverage.

Save this credential-free local target config outside the repository:

{
  "version": 1,
  "id": "local-qa",
  "mode": "managed-self-hosted",
  "journeys": ["task-properties"],
  "executionEnvironment": "local",
  "baseline": { "features": {}, "connections": [] },
  "limits": { "durationMs": 600000, "modelBudgetCents": 0, "maxRuns": 0 }
}

pnpm test:e2e:runner -- --suite product-journeys --list
pnpm test:e2e:runner -- --target-config /private/target.json --preview
pnpm test:e2e:runner -- --target-config /private/target.json --output /private/new-campaign

Preview resolves selections and declared changes without loading the private provider, reading credentials, signing in, provisioning, or making model calls. Its output includes required state, features/connections, lifetime, and limits. Output directories must be new; an attempt is never overwritten. Browser-only results use null provider/model and runtime none, including failures before the journey starts. No artificial model run is introduced for reporting. New execution IDs have the form product-journeys.<target>.<profile-or-browser>.<environment>.<journey>; the report reader continues to accept historical four-part execution IDs.

Cloud config supplies adapterModule and the private provider's reference-only adapterConfig. Use the private CLI and runbook to configure those fields. Paid onboarding requires positive modelBudgetCents and maxRuns, a duration of at most one hour, and a qualified operations adapter. The initial private Cloud adapter admits at most 30 minutes and $10. Select runner-codex-mini explicitly for its gpt-5.4-mini pilot; existing profile defaults remain unchanged. There are no automatic story retries. One campaign may create at most one disposable workspace.

Workspace contention can defer a child before provider execution. The journey keeps that run and follows only its unique, scoped durable replacement when the server proves that no provider work started. A scheduled replacement remains pending and consumes the run limit. It cannot satisfy completion; the child must still finish through native execution and pass the independent artifact checks.

The attached ask-question recipe requires a prepared native general agent and an explicit execution environment. Legacy execution is unsupported until its saved model/provider identity can be verified. A registered agent avoids a new setup probe; a disposable QA agent uses the existing native fixture defaults and its setup remains separately unpriced. A restricted review bot is not a general-work fixture. The private provider supplies its exact execution identity through the agent capability and collects normalized run usage. The existing Cloud provider still owns authentication, conditional leases, fixture ownership, and cleanup. A model allowance is an accounting threshold; reused direct-provider routes do not acquire the onboarding gateway's request-level cash guarantee. The question observer allows one run and waits at most four minutes. Cleanup stops only run-owned question work; shared agent configuration stays outside ownership. When the QA adapter explicitly selects terminal-history retention, it terminates its disposable agent, makes owned tasks terminal, verifies no active runs, retains the records for decision-history integrity, and releases both QA leases. This is reported as retained data, rather than confirmed deletion.

Evidence and lifecycle

Results use the existing campaign/result schemas and dashboard. Each result retains campaign/attempt IDs, source revision, definition hash, deployed tenant commit, Cloud release, runtime identity, configuration hash, setup provenance, checks, and authentication/setup/journey/collection/cleanup outcomes. A failed prerequisite remains failed at that boundary; every dependent selection receives a blocked result. Unsupported target capabilities are distinct from failures. Deployment/configuration drift during a journey fails its result.

New onboarding attempts retain a bounded productJourney.artifact receipt in the existing private normalized-results.json, before disposable cleanup. It includes the exact downloaded connection-proof.json bytes as base64, attachment and originating-run IDs, byte count and SHA-256, plus the harness-generated input and independent expected result. Reinspection can decode the original bytes, recompute their checksum, and recompute the expected nonce, count, sum, and input checksum after the workspace is deleted. Only this exact four-field synthetic fixture is admitted, with a 4 KiB download limit and a closed receipt schema; arbitrary agent output is excluded. Capture follows attribution and independent download verification. The receipt survives later document, link, reload, or trace failures without turning those failed journey steps into passes. Historical attempts without it remain readable and do not gain retained-artifact proof retroactively. Descendant stories reuse context without copying the receipt.

Collection must finish within the campaign deadline. Cleanup and evidence publication then share a separate ten-minute grace period, with the last thirty seconds reserved for a twenty-second stop-only fallback and ten-second browser close. These are cleanup bounds and do not admit further story or model work. Provider lifecycle hooks receive a deadline and cancellation signal; they must bound in-flight requests and fence late resource mutations or lease writes when the signal aborts. A timed-out release cannot authorize evidence finalization or lease release. Its manifest stays available for cleanup recovery.

Every would-be successful result is checked against the retained-result success contract before successful cleanup. Missing assertions or paid accounting proof turn the campaign into a failure while preserving valid cost receipts, so an invalid success cannot trigger disposable-stack deletion.

Only post-journey screenshots are captured. Failed task/search screens are retained only after tenant setup; authentication pages are excluded. Browser state, login codes, raw errors, credentials, request headers, and auth screenshots are excluded. All Cloud evidence is private; the public history publisher rejects these bundles. The private provider uses conditional S3 identity/stack leases and intent/receipt ownership manifests. An expired lease permits cleanup recovery, not reuse.

Managed self-hosted instances are removed after every attempt. Existing Cloud stacks retain the QA account and declared baseline while removing verified run-owned fixtures. Successful disposable stacks are deleted. Failed disposable stacks are stopped and retained for up to 24 hours. The deployment provider declares earlier cleanup eligibility to leave time for its sweeper. Interrupted cleanup remains visible and retains exclusive stack ownership. QA identity and inbox never belong to disposable ownership.

Eval operations integration and qualification

The private adapter carries the same campaign/attempt identity through bounded request admission, setup/agent phase transitions, run observation, cost receipts, trace IDs, and feedback collection. A normalized operations receipt belongs only to the onboarding attempt; descendants do not repeat shared setup charges. Unknown cost remains unknown. Raw feedback, traces, and ledgers stay private. Invocation evidence distinguishes native event inspection from a proven provider_not_started workspace deferral. Both require complete event reads. Pending replacements and contradictory execution evidence remain partial.

The sibling Operationalize eval runs implementation currently admits local cells and binds its gateway to loopback. That is not Cloud reachability or budget qualification. A Cloud adapter must prove the selected runtime's route, effective credential binding, budget admission, and exact campaign deadline before any paid provider action. The normal wizard first saves a custom-gateway connection and selects its model without inference. Qualification checks this exact saved route from the actual runtime before the normal Connect probe. Missing qualification blocks onboarding; it must never fall back to an unmetered direct provider request.

As of 2026-10-22, the same task-properties story has passed in real browsers on managed self-hosted and a registered testing Cloud stack, including cleanup and zero model calls. Normal QA email-code authentication and account admission have also passed against testing. Cloud onboarding selectors and lifecycle contracts have offline tests; fresh onboarding, dependent reuse, and disposable cleanup remain unqualified. Provider and trace secret references are configured. The separate onboarding gateway product change, trusted CI selection, and real runtime gateway admission remain live qualification prerequisites. Testing and staging use separate registries and credentials; only the declared testing control plane is admitted. Defining a story or passing structural checks is not evidence that its Cloud journey passed.