DottaandPaperclip
0726a00e80
## Thinking Path > - Paperclip lets people manage AI agents and govern their tools. > - Apps already supports provider-hosted MCP servers. > - Useful providers still need real setup and read proof before Browse exposure. > - Browser testing found a Bitly token-format failure and an OAuth callback that replaced an explicit empty agent selection. > - This PR qualifies four provider methods and fixes those shared OAuth paths. > - Providers that still need login or approval remain withheld from new Browse listings. ## Linked Issues or Issue Description Refs: #15621, the merged hosted MCP qualification batch. Searches found no duplicate Bitly or Context7 implementation PR. **What existing behavior does this improve?** Apps setup, provider MCP discovery, token exchange, and saved agent access through an OAuth callback. **Subsystem affected** Shared Apps definitions, the server tool-access service, and the UI setup/recovery route. **Current behavior** Bitly's callback can fail with `oauth_access_token_missing` when its token response is not JSON. Curated MCP callbacks can treat an explicitly saved empty install set as access for all agents. Context7 is hidden and Hugging Face lacks a curated anonymous method. Saved drafts for hidden providers cannot finish setup through their catalog wizard. **Proposed behavior** Request JSON token responses. Record explicit remote MCP install choices in the install transaction and preserve them at callback. Keep managed subject/default access when no choice was saved. Expose the qualified Bitly and Context7 methods, add anonymous Hugging Face Hub access, and record Resend qualification. Resume hidden providers only through an exact matching company-visible saved draft. **Reason and benefit** People can connect useful hosted tools through the existing Apps flow. An explicit zero-agent selection survives authorization. Public documentation lookups need no OAuth app, account, or key. **Breaking changes** Explicitly saved empty MCP install choices now remain empty. Existing managed defaults without a saved choice retain their behavior. No schema migration or API shape change. ## What Changed - Qualify Bitly OAuth, Context7 public MCP, Hugging Face public MCP, and Resend OAuth with real browser setup, useful UI reads, and reload checks. - Negotiate JSON OAuth token responses and preserve explicitly saved MCP agent reach with a transactional config marker. - Add durable provider overrides, permission reviews, dated text-only evidence, and official branding provenance. Remove all seven evidence images and their report references. - Restore Finish setup for hidden-provider drafts with company/application/provider checks; keep fresh setup withheld. Preserve success after the exact resumed draft becomes active, and restore valid completed URLs to that exact saved Permissions page; reject initially active, disabled, or archived resume targets. Align the Context7 route assertion with its new qualified availability. - Retain hidden ClickUp, Klaviyo, and monday.com research with exact login/approval gates. monday.com requires provider callback allowlisting. ## Verification - Connector service suite: 420 passed, including default/empty/agent/company reach and managed OAuth lifecycle coverage. - Shared catalog: 36 passed. Override tests: 3 passed. Brand checks: 101 identities passed. - Focused UI setup/recovery, Browse, and OAuth-helper suites: 306 passed. Actual hidden-draft resume/reload passed; a public Context7 draft seeded in the isolated app completed through the active-state refetch and persisted with zero agents after reload. The completed URL refresh and View connection open the exact saved Permissions page. Fresh hidden setup, normal initially active resume, disabled/archived status, and provider mismatch are rejected; a draft at the completion stage stays in setup. - Recursive typecheck and build passed again after rebase. The full local Vitest run began before rebase and was cancelled as superseded while still in the general-server phase; it is not a completed pass. Exact-head CI supplies broad coverage. The focused connector service suite passed against the final code. UI typecheck, build, and token gates passed again after the draft-recovery fix. - Targeted mock MCP Playwright journey: 1 passed (34.9s). It now verifies View connection reaches the exact saved Permissions route, both discovered actions, and reload persistence. This replaces the stale Browse expectation found by CI. - All CI gates passed on final commit `32bb4c6422411eee632486950e45e2735102d1b3`. The inherited-pause test timed out in the cleanup run and passed on one retry without code changes; the entire file also passed locally, 36/36. Its exact timing cause remains unresolved. A signoff timeout on the preceding production-code commit also passed on its single retry. Greptile reviewed the final commit at 5/5 with no open findings. - Actual UI reads: Bitly current-user read; Resend List Domains including a fresh setup after the final callback refinement; Context7 React docs; Hugging Face public docs search. No provider writes or real agent runtimes ran. - [Text-only qualification report](https://github.com/paperclipai/paperclip/blob/32bb4c6422411eee632486950e45e2735102d1b3/doc/connections/easy-mcp-batch-2-2026-10-09.md) include evidence limits and exact blockers. Account/profile/domain results are omitted. ## Risks - Bitly `mcp.all` and Resend `full_access` remain broad provider grants. Qualification kept writes Off and selected no agents. Read proof does not establish write behavior or refresh rotation. - The explicit-choice marker applies to new install saves; older unmarked flows keep their existing defaults. Its JSONB merge avoids overwriting concurrent config fields. - Public provider catalogs and rate limits can change. Unqualified providers remain withheld from new Browse entries; retained connections remain available for recovery. ## Model Used OpenAI Codex, based on GPT-6, plus OpenAI `gpt-6-luna` subagents for provider research, browser testing, and review. The exact primary serving variant and context-window size are not exposed by this runtime. Used reasoning, code execution, and browser 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 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, Asana, 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.