Devin FoleyandPaperclip
35bd7f6059
## Thinking Path > - Paperclip is the open source app people use to manage AI agents for work. > - Its Cloud connector delivers encrypted GitHub events to an instance. > - One failed inner event currently rejects the whole authenticated batch. > - Healthy events then remain unacknowledged and are downloaded again. > - GitHub response and check reconciliation also reads full run records when it needs only ownership and status. > - This pull request isolates inner failures and narrows those run projections. > - Valid events can finish while failed events remain available for recovery. ## Linked Issues or Issue Description **What happened?** An inner App event encrypted with an unavailable key causes `leaseEvents` to reject the complete batch. No sibling can finish or acknowledge. Repeated retries download the same encrypted payloads. Separately, GitHub response and check reads load prompts, runtime profiles, results, and log excerpts that their callers do not use. **Expected behavior** Authenticate the outer batch and lease before handling individual events. Process valid siblings independently. Retain failed events without acknowledging them. Read only the current run fields needed for response ownership and status checks. **Steps to reproduce** 1. Seal one event for an old instance key and another for the current key. 2. Put both events in a correctly authenticated outer lease. 3. Observe that the old client rejects the whole lease. 4. With this change, the valid event processes, the failed ID is reported locally, and only completed events acknowledge. No public issue exists. The change does not add a provider integration or duplicate a roadmap feature. ## What Changed - Keep outer authentication, environment checks, and lease binding strict. - Isolate inner decryption and route-binding failures. Return their authenticated IDs only to the local poller and count them as failures. - Leave failed events unacknowledged in the broker. Continue processing and acknowledging healthy and duplicate siblings. - Read only run identity, status, and required request context for GitHub responses. Read only run ID and status for check reconciliation. - Cover stale keys, swapped routes, invalid outer bindings, all-failed batches, large unused run payloads, and cross-company/task refusals. ## Verification - Connector cryptography suite: 47 tests passed. - Final connector suite: 50 tests passed, including cryptography and three real PostgreSQL connection-event tests. These cover acknowledgment isolation, all-failed batches, and the exact safe warning fields. - GitHub workflow regression suite after the master refresh: 307 tests passed, including the large-payload/company/task test (1,084 unrelated tests skipped by the selection). - Server typecheck passed after the final source changes. - `pnpm -r typecheck` and `pnpm build` passed after the latest conflict-free master refresh. - The broad local `pnpm test:run` was stopped when the branch was refreshed; it has no complete passing result. All CI gates passed on the final commit, including general and serialized server suites, runner verification, build, typecheck, and end-to-end tests. Apex is 5/5 with all review comments resolved. The last change removes source comments and expands docs; both edited TypeScript files emit identical JavaScript before and after that change. - A read-only sample compared full run records with the new field sets: response data decreased by about 96%, and check data by over 99%. This is serialized query output, not a claim of realized billing savings or CPU reduction. - An initial database test setup failed because the local dependency install omitted native-library symlinks. The package's standard setup script repaired them. The unchanged test timeout then passed. - Added lines checked for credentials, customer data, private links, and internal issue references. ## Risks Failed inner events remain pending and retry under the broker's existing lease and retention policy. This change does not recover a lost original private key or introduce a dead-letter deletion path. Outer authentication failures still reject the complete batch. Run projections must retain request provenance and task binding fields. Existing predicates, ordering, identity validation, and publication authority remain unchanged. The change has no schema migration and adds no background timer or new provider call. ## Model Used OpenAI GPT-6 through Codex, with reasoning and shell/GitHub CLI tools. ## 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 - [x] I have described the issue in-PR following the bug report template - [x] I have not referenced internal or instance-local Paperclip issues or links - [x] My branch name describes the change and contains no internal ticket ID - [x] Focused local regressions and all CI gates pass - [x] I have added and updated tests - [x] I have updated relevant documentation - [x] I have documented risks - [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, Asana, Sentry, PostHog, Braintrust, Neon, Superagent, Gauge, Ditto, Unikraft, 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.