## Thinking Path > - Paperclip manages AI agents that perform work. > - The paid runner matrix verifies complete runner behavior with real providers. > - Each matrix job currently repeats work on GitHub-hosted runners. > - Paperclip has an ephemeral AWS runner fleet for trusted workflows. > - The paid workflow needs a reviewed and fail-closed route to that fleet. > - This pull request adds that route and keeps the existing hosted runner as the disabled-state fallback. > - The benefit is faster paid campaigns with the same actor, environment, and secret boundaries. ## Linked Issues or Issue Description **What happened?** The Runner Full-Stack E2E workflow always uses `ubuntu-latest-m`. It limits the matrix to 57 parallel jobs. The repository AWS fleet can run 100 ephemeral jobs, but the paid workflow cannot select it. **Expected behavior** An explicit repository flag must select the reviewed AWS fleet label. A missing or invalid flag must keep the existing hosted runner. The workflow must authorize the stable actor identity before it routes any paid job. **Steps to reproduce** 1. Dispatch the Runner Full-Stack E2E workflow from `master`. 2. Inspect a paid matrix job. 3. Observe that the job requests `ubuntu-latest-m` even when the AWS fleet should be used. **Paperclip version or commit** `da0947d3582ac7779d6bf11851c9938eca6c5c8c` **Deployment mode** GitHub Actions paid runner campaign. ## What Changed - Add a fail-closed `RUNNER_E2E_AWS_ENABLED` switch. - Select only the reviewed AWS fleet label or the existing hosted label. - Permit up to 100 parallel jobs in AWS mode. - Keep the hosted-runner limit at 57. - Reauthorize paid execution before checkout and provider access. - Stop paid checkouts from storing GitHub credentials. - Cancel superseded validation-ref campaigns while preserving `master` audit runs. - Add workflow policy checks and operator documentation. ## Verification - `git diff --check` - `actionlint -ignore SC2129 .github/workflows/runner-full-stack-e2e.yml` - The organization runner group permits this workflow only from `refs/heads/master`. - The repository AWS switch remains disabled until this pull request is merged and a one-cell probe succeeds. ## Risks - A wrong fleet policy can leave jobs queued. The disabled state keeps the existing hosted runner. - The AWS fleet uses paid compute. The workflow validates a configured maximum of 100 jobs. - The runner group, actor allowlist, and paid environment remain separate enforcement layers. > For core feature work, check [`ROADMAP.md`](ROADMAP.md) first and discuss it in `#dev` before opening the PR. Feature PRs that overlap with planned core work may need to be redirected — check the roadmap first. See `CONTRIBUTING.md`. ## Model Used OpenAI Codex based on GPT-5 with agentic reasoning, repository inspection, code editing, Git, GitHub API coordination, and static workflow analysis. The exact deployed model identifier and context-window size are not exposed to this task. ## 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 - [ ] 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 - [ ] 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
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Runner E2E security for a public repository
This suite can spend provider money, expose four API credentials to isolated test processes, publish a container, retain private visual evidence, and write public structured evidence. Treat changes to the workflow, harness, fixture prompts, evidence packager, and publisher as security-sensitive production changes.
GitHub authorization
Set RUNNER_E2E_ALLOWED_ACTOR_IDS to a non-empty JSON array of numeric GitHub
user IDs, for example [123456,789012]. Resolve each ID from the authenticated
CLI and verify the login before adding it:
gh api users/LOGIN --jq '{login,id}'
The paid workflows reject manual dispatches outside the default branch before checkout. They verify both the original actor and triggering actor for every scheduled or manual attempt, including human reruns. Every secret-bearing job repeats this check as its first step so GitHub's partial-job rerun feature cannot bypass a successful predecessor authorization job. The legacy manually dispatched E2E workflow uses the same gate. Numeric IDs are stable across username changes and prevent lookalike-name authorization.
The full-stack and live campaigns have one Sunday UTC schedule each and also support explicit manual dispatch. Their legacy-named nightly repository variables remain independent kill switches. Neither paid workflow accepts pull-request, push, workflow-run, or reusable-workflow triggers.
Protect the default branch, require review for workflow/harness paths, restrict workflow dispatch permission, and restrict repository variable/environment administration to the same trusted maintainers. Configure the organization to allow only approved GitHub Actions. A malicious change merged into the default branch executes with the same authority as the suite.
Every external action in the paid workflow is pinned to a full commit SHA. Keep the adjacent major-version comment for update tooling, and resolve and review a new immutable SHA before upgrading an action. The credential-free security test rejects mutable tag or branch references.
Secrets and protected environments
Create runner-e2e-paid, restrict deployments to the default branch, and put
only OPENAI_API_KEY, ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, OPENROUTER_API_KEY, and
DAYTONA_API_KEY in it. Do not duplicate these credentials as repository- or
organization-level Actions secrets: environment scoping is the boundary that
prevents branch or pull-request jobs from requesting them. Require approval
from an account in RUNNER_E2E_ALLOWED_ACTOR_IDS for this environment and
disable administrator bypass. The authorize,
catalog, image, report, history, and Pages jobs receive none of these secrets.
Each full-stack matrix cell receives only its selected profile credential, plus
Daytona only for Daytona cells. Secret-bearing and OIDC jobs use frozen installs
without a shared dependency cache.
The Paperclip server process also receives none; the browser posts each value
once to the encrypted company secret API and agents/environments retain only
secret references.
Create runner-e2e-history, also default-branch-only, for the OIDC publishing
job. It contains no long-lived AWS key. Required reviewers may be added when a
human approval on every nightly publication is acceptable; otherwise rely on
the actor gate, environment branch restriction, and protected default branch.
Runner fleet isolation
When RUNNER_E2E_AWS_ENABLED=true, paid matrix cells use the exact RunsOn fleet
selector runs-on/fleet=paperclip-public-pr-x64/env=public-ci, matching the AWS
fleet selected by pr-trusted.yml only after its stable numeric-ID trust gate.
Any other or missing toggle value falls back to the existing ubuntu-latest-m
paid runner and its lower concurrency ceiling. The workflow chooses between
those two reviewed literal labels; it never evaluates a configured runner label.
Keep both runner targets restricted to paperclipai/paperclip and workflows
that independently authorize trusted source revisions. Never let a fork or
untrusted pull-request workflow target them. The RunsOn fleet must launch a
fresh ephemeral instance for every job, prohibit persistent runner reuse, and
disable interactive SSH/debug access unless a separate incident procedure
explicitly authorizes it.
Changing the runner does not widen secret access. The paid workflow still has
only schedule and manual triggers, requires the protected default branch and
allowlisted stable actor IDs before checkout, repeats that authorization as the
first matrix step, and receives provider credentials only from the protected
runner-e2e-paid environment. The fleet selector is an exact workflow literal;
the only repository-controlled input is its boolean rollout switch, so
configuration cannot redirect a secret-bearing job to an arbitrary runner.
AWS OIDC and S3
The AWS role trust policy should accept only GitHub's OIDC audience and the publishing environment subject:
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Principal": {
"Federated": "arn:aws:iam::ACCOUNT_ID:oidc-provider/token.actions.githubusercontent.com"
},
"Action": "sts:AssumeRoleWithWebIdentity",
"Condition": {
"StringEquals": {
"token.actions.githubusercontent.com:aud": "sts.amazonaws.com",
"token.actions.githubusercontent.com:sub": "repo:paperclipai/paperclip:environment:runner-e2e-history"
}
}
}
]
}
Grant only List on the bucket prefix and Get/Put on its objects. Do not grant Delete, ACL, bucket-policy, or wildcard-resource permissions:
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": "s3:ListBucket",
"Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::BUCKET",
"Condition": {
"StringLike": { "s3:prefix": ["runner-e2e", "runner-e2e/*"] }
}
},
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": ["s3:GetObject", "s3:PutObject"],
"Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::BUCKET/runner-e2e/*"
}
]
}
Enable S3 versioning, default encryption, and Block Public Access. Disable object ACLs. CloudFront receives read-only access through Origin Access Control; the bucket itself stays private. Log S3 data writes and alert on attempts to write outside the prefix or assume the role with a different subject.
Campaign prefixes are content-digested and immutable. The publisher refuses a different digest at an existing campaign key. Only the compact history and latest pointers are mutable, and S3 versioning makes those updates recoverable.
Public evidence boundary
CloudFront and GitHub Pages are public. Fixture identifiers, timing, token
usage, costs, normalized results, and allowlisted inert structured per-attempt
evidence are expected public data. Screenshots, video, archives, generated
Playwright/blob/HTML report trees, credentials, Paperclip homes, databases,
workspaces, master keys, raw/unredacted logs, and unallowlisted files are not.
Only allowlisted .log copies that passed exact-value/key-shape scanning and
redaction may cross the public boundary.
The packaged evidence uploaded as a 30-day GitHub Actions artifact has a different, access-controlled boundary. Text is exact-value and key-shape scanned and redacted. PNG and WebM are raw-byte scanned but cannot be inspected for credentials rendered as pixels, so they remain only in local evidence and the access-controlled artifact. SVG is rejected during packaging because it is active content.
Before permanent publication, the campaign publisher prunes raster/video
files, archives, and generated report trees. It then regenerates the dashboard
from the remaining allowlisted .json, .log, .md, and .txt evidence and
accepts only that dashboard, normalized JSON/JUnit/summary, fixed
branding assets, and the inert structured evidence paths. Per-attempt XML is
excluded because browsers can process XML/XSLT; the only public XML is the
root junit.xml, which the report aggregator constructs from fixed markup and
XML-escaped fields. The same pruned tree feeds both S3/CloudFront history and
the optional GitHub Pages artifact. A leak fails the cell and withholds the
unsafe file.
Rotate the affected credential immediately if a secret-scanning failure or unexpected public object is observed. Preserve the access-controlled Actions artifact and S3 object versions for incident analysis; do not weaken scanning to make a campaign publish.