## Thinking Path > - Paperclip manages AI agents and their work. > - Users choose a harness during agent setup. > - Claude, Codex, and OpenCode already receive their qualified Runner default. > - Pi has a qualified native integration but new Pi agents still use the direct adapter. > - This change gives new Pi agents the native default on supported targets. > - Saved agents keep their runner and compatible settings. Legacy remains available in Advanced. ## Linked Issues or Issue Description Refs #17120, #14921, #14922, #14923, #14924, and #14956. Related generic default work: #15422. This PR is the separate Pi follow-up to the merged OpenCode change. **Current behavior** Choosing Pi for a new agent saves the direct Pi adapter. The native Pi integration remains behind the generic experimental flag. **Proposed behavior** Default new Pi agents to ACPX Pi on macOS ARM64/x64 and GNU/Linux x64 with supported glibc. Keep unsupported targets and explicit Legacy selections on the direct adapter. Require an explicit provider/model before test or hire. Permit model-free inactive setup drafts. **Reason and benefit** Users choose Pi once and receive its qualified runner. Saved agents retain their identity and settings. Conversions reject unsupported legacy thinking and launch settings instead of dropping them. ## What Changed - Add Pi to the shared platform/default contract and server creation selection. - Admit native Pi without the generic experimental flag. - Preserve provider models, credentials, workspace settings, exact thinking, and saved native policies. - Add Pi runner controls, branding, setup resume, onboarding, built-in configuration, and import handling. - Add managed Pi OpenRouter routing and matching native provider API-key accounts. Keep subscription and custom gateway exclusions. Clear alternate credentials and reject custom Pi provider overrides. - Keep Pi draft models empty instead of applying Claude's default model. - Verify setup against the pinned Pi runtime. For native Pi on the official OpenRouter route, reverify the API key live without requiring a global Legacy Pi CLI. - Match Pi’s bounded controller close window to its native snapshot cleanup and lifetime verification, preserving explicit caller deadlines and the mandatory drain/suspension proof. - Bind Pi sidecars to the package that owns the pinned native assets, including source and vendored server layouts. Other providers retain their existing package authority. - Keep protocol-owned finish/block tools out of the ACPX forwarded catalog. The trusted bridge installs these tools itself; the complete Rust authorization catalog and terminal receipt ledger remain intact. This fixes actual Pi session startup and applies to other ACPX consumers. - Advance Copilot’s shared-source attestation to v58 because it pins the shared files touched by Pi. Preserve immutable v57 bytes and historical decoding; Pi’s own release identity is unchanged. - Add regression coverage and update the paired maps and developer documentation. ## Verification - Passed: full repository typecheck and full production build on final head656d304783, including the generated attestation repair. - Passed: focused shared/server/UI suites covering default selection, platform fallback, conversion preservation, inactive drafts, managed account compatibility, credential isolation, OpenRouter routing/model IDs, exact thinking controls, and saved-account selection. Relevant batches include 375 server/conversion tests, 267 account/routing tests, and 110 UI setup/account tests. - Passed: 179 attestation, historical-profile, qualified-profile, and native-execution contract tests after CI identified stale Copilot source hashes. The identity generator check passes; the only delta after the passing Pi browser run is this Copilot attestation/history repair. - Passed: 145 managed-account tests, including actual service preparation and API-key adoption/rejection for native Pi without the Legacy CLI; 6 pinned-installation probe tests. - Red then green: an actual task failed session.open because its 54-operation catalog included the bridge-owned terminal tools. The regression with those tools failed before the filter; all 399 Rust library tests pass after it. The full product retry exposed an additional package-authority mismatch. Four authority tests failed before that repair; 11 authority checks and 14 installation/asset checks pass afterward. Direct real Pi session initialization with the corrected package root and catalog succeeds. No model prompt was sent by that diagnostic. - Red then green: real Pi posted Hello from Pi but its controller closed before native cleanup could finish. The cleanup-budget test failed with the old default and passes with the bounded Pi window. All 46 selected suspension, drain, and package-authority tests pass after building their native fixture. - Passed: token gates, paired map checks, Rust formatting, and git diff --check. - Passed real browser acceptance on macOS ARM64, generic native runner flag disabled, sourcea433748a12(Pi code unchanged afterward): the UI selects Paperclip Runner by default, retains Pi and the selected model/account, and verifies the pinned runtime plus live OpenRouter key. A fresh UI-created task, assigned to the UI-created native Pi agent, posted exactly `Hello from Pi` and reached Done without retry or restart. The native run and workspace finalization succeeded; the response and Done persisted after Reload. - Evidence: 8 preserved browser attempts, including the final passing 18-step journey with all screenshots. Prior failures remain recorded. The earlier failed checkpoint run recovered on server restart; that recovery is separate from the fresh final task’s clean success. - Preserved browser failures: missing account control/inherited Claude draft model; incompatible managed-account/model-prefix handling; generic npm probe for Pi; Legacy CLI hello check; duplicate terminal tools and wrong provider-package authority at actual native session.open; a real Hello from Pi comment followed by premature checkpoint cleanup timeout. Each failure has retained screenshots/logs and a corresponding focused repair. The fresh final task proves these repairs end to end. - The exact Runner Vitest shard was also run locally after the attestation fix: the stale-hash failure is gone; 1,833 tests passed, 10 skipped, and two Codex retained-control settlement scenarios failed with `native_cleanup_maintenance_unproven` during terminal ACK/suspension replay. Both scenarios passed in an isolated rerun (2/2), and the same 19-test file passed in the preceding Linux CI run. The precise full-shard timing cause is not established. These Codex scenarios are outside the changed Pi paths; the original local failures are retained; no complete local Runner-shard pass is claimed. The corresponding Runner shard now passes on the final head in hosted Linux CI. All 60 final-head check runs are now terminal and clean (55 successful, 1 neutral, 4 skipped), and the legacy Snyk status is successful. - Local full repository tests were attempted but not completed: provisioning briefly confused a workspace symlink, then a later run was stopped before browser-driven repairs. No full local-suite pass is claimed. Final-head hosted CI is green and fresh Greptile review is 5/5 with all review threads resolved; earlier jobs canceled by runner shutdown are not counted as a pass. ## Risks - Pi cleanup has a finite 45-second default window, accounting for the native 30-second snapshot cleanup and 5-second lifetime fence. Other providers and explicit caller deadlines retain their prior behavior. - Pi requires explicit operator setup with `paperclipai runtime setup pi` on the execution host. This PR does not add automatic downloads. - Linux ARM64, Windows, musl, and unqualified targets retain Legacy. - Legacy thinking levels minimal, medium, and xhigh cannot be translated exactly. Native max thinking, warm lifecycle, or restricted permissions cannot be dropped during a return to Legacy. - Copilot’s bound profile advances to v58 with exact current launch admission; v57 remains decodable for recovery. No historical identity is rewritten. - Existing agents and immutable run descriptors are not migrated. Cloud Pi availability is unchanged. ## Model Used OpenAI GPT-6 through Codex with reasoning, code editing, command execution, and browser use. The exact serving model ID and context-window size are not exposed in this session. ## 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, Sentry, PostHog, Braintrust, Neon, Superagent, Gauge, Ditto, 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.