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PaperClipAI/tests/runner-e2e/SECURITY.md
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DottaandPaperclip 992f720262 fix: make runner task context ownership explicit (#13753)
<!-- Write all pull request text in Simplified Technical English
(ASD-STE100). -->

## Thinking Path

> - Paperclip is the open source app people use to manage AI agents for
work.
> - Task descriptions, comments, continuation data, skills, and
execution rules enter several agent adapters.
> - The same source can be rendered by more than one automatic input
carrier.
> - Failed resumes can also rebuild input from stale or compact context.
> - This pull request gives each Paperclip-owned source one delivery
owner and preserves the required transport boundaries.
> - It adds deterministic adapter, interaction, runner, and browser
tests for these boundaries.
> - The benefit is more predictable context delivery with explicit
evidence for later live qualification.

## Linked Issues or Issue Description

Related: #13144 removes a duplicate environment payload and bounds wake
lists. Related: #11360 addresses Hermes resume behavior. This pull
request preserves compatible active-session formats while repairing
context ownership and stale question creation.

**What happened?**

Task descriptions and comments could enter more than one automatic
context block. Native transports could wrap a complete model input in a
second task envelope. Some legacy and gateway adapters could omit the
owned assignment on ordinary tasks or rebuild a failed resume with stale
compact context. A continuation could also request a question after
newer human comments had arrived.

**Expected behavior**

Each task or comment source has one automatic model-facing owner.
Distinct comment IDs and repeated wording remain distinct. Fresh
fallback attempts rebuild the required full context. A question request
is rejected when newer queued human direction makes it stale. Harness
access policy remains owned by execution configuration.

**Steps to reproduce**

1. Build a task with a description and current comments.
2. Capture the actual adapter or runner input.
3. Compare source ownership and task-envelope nesting.
4. Queue a human comment before a continuation requests a question.
5. Trigger a failed resume and inspect the fresh retry input.
6. Run the focused adapter, interaction, runner, and browser checks.

## What Changed

- Add shared prompt-section selection at the provider-attempt boundary.
- Deliver owned assignment context through native, legacy CLI, ACP,
gateway, cloud, Pi, Kimi, Grok, Gemini, OpenCode, Cursor, OpenClaw, and
Hermes paths.
- Rebuild full or compact context after resume recovery changes the
attempt. Add native and Claude ACP tests of actual recovery requests.
- Preserve custom templates, loaded instruction files, execution
policies, and older active-session formats.
- Record continuation source metadata and reject stale question creation
under the issue-row lock.
- Add explicit Product E2E context-integrity profiles, prerequisite
gates, credential-isolation checks, and report fixtures.
- Bypass service-worker forwarding for same-origin Vite development
modules. A real Chromium test fails with resource exhaustion before the
repair and passes after it. Production asset caching keeps its existing
policy.
- Add browser diagnostics and service-worker module-loading regressions.
- Add an explicit zero-retry eval option. The default retry behavior
remains unchanged. Each campaign records its effective policy.
- Remove the model-facing working-directory sentence from four prompt
builders. Existing workspace, sandbox, permission, and custom-template
configuration remains unchanged.
- Align the everyday workflow assertion with the current 47-entry
catalog.

Compared with current upstream master, the branch carries the
context-ownership implementation and its tests, the explicit
context-integrity catalog and evidence harness, and the focused browser
regression checks.

## Verification

**Merge assessment:** focused regression evidence supports merge. This
is not full completion of the original broad qualification matrix. The
maintainer has authorized merge after fresh verification of the master
integration.

- Current head: `bbd52f82114eabf09bc7b1a7e97d54a5b43bbc00`. This
integrates current master `2f585ef26a1814fa209715242d1ca791b63e4c4e`.
All 14 conflicts are resolved. Cancellation checks, workspace
finalization, native Grok support, and both sets of tests are retained.
- Current-head Greptile: **5/5**, with no blocking findings. The review
names this exact commit. All **59 reported checks are terminal: 55
successful, 4 skipped, zero pending or failing**. This includes the full
root general and serialized suites, separate runner checks, typecheck,
build, canary, browser E2E, Docker, and security checks. The successful
legacy security status is included in that total.
- After integration: workspace typecheck and full build passed. Separate
runner checks passed: **2,160 TypeScript tests (10 skipped), 582 Rust
tests, and 39 preparation checks**. Other passing checks include 621
Product E2E harness units, 376 focused shared/adapter tests, 160
real-database/API tests, 86 Hermes tests, 18 browser-support checks, and
Product E2E typechecking. The complete root suite passed in CI. The
duplicate local monolithic root run was stopped after that CI result; it
is not counted as a completed local pass.
- New native recovery coverage retains full assignment, completion
contract, and explicit skill selection after safe replacement, for old
and prepared input formats. Full native session test file: **136/136
passed**.
- New Claude ACP coverage captures actual fresh, resumed, and
missing-session fallback requests. It verifies one assignment copy,
comment order, identical text under distinct comment IDs, and full
fallback context. Full file: **33/33 passed**. Both affected TypeScript
checks passed.
- Existing deterministic tests cover source revisions, approval and
trust boundaries, completion validation, custom templates, compatible
sessions, standalone driver wrapping, and maintained adapter transport
requests.
- Provider-free browser support: **17/17 passed** after the master
merge. Service-worker unit tests: **33/33 passed**. The module-overload
regression failed before the repair and passed after it in real
Chromium.

### Fresh live comparisons

The new batch ran exactly four Product E2E attempts. **All four passed
on the first attempt; no retries.** Each has six terminal matchers plus
the existing browser lifecycle and invariant checks.

| Exact case ID | Control | Candidate |
|---|---|---|
| `core-compatibility.runner-codex.local.plan-revise-accept` | Passed |
Passed |
|
`local-session-integrity.runner-acpx-claude.local.structured-question-restart-resume`
| Passed | Passed |

The plan case checks a revised canonical plan and revision-bound
approval before completion. The question case restarts the server before
submitting the answer, then verifies the continuation completes.

Control source is `dfa4e1bda8d50a1a01746603251a9128dbe9d0d6`. Candidate
source is `79fcdb5dece501d28064ea9da306603881b46f0c`. They use identical
frozen definitions and provider versions: Codex `0.156.0` with
`gpt-5.6-sol`; ACPX `0.13.1` / Claude ACP `0.73.0` with
`claude-sonnet-5`. The September 24 head added master browser recovery
and test-only changes. The September 28 head also integrates newer
master changes, including cancellation, workspace finalization, and
native Grok. These are frozen-source live results, not exact-head live
runs.

The candidate received one description copy where the control initially
received three. The submitted initial plan envelopes were 7,969 versus
19,097 characters. Question envelopes were 7,592 versus 18,919. These
are structural measurements, not whole-provider token or dollar savings.

### Earlier evidence and failed attempts

- The preceding fresh batch has four effective passing pairs: OpenCode
comment continuation and assigned skill, native Codex comment
continuation, and native Claude comment continuation. It retains **11
attempts: eight passed and three failed**.
- Original failures remain recorded: missing local PostgreSQL library
links before task creation; host-sleep cleanup after task/page checks
passed; and a Claude **control** session-open rejection before a model
turn. Setup was repaired identically on both worktrees. The permitted
unchanged infrastructure retries passed. The underlying Claude provider
startup error was not retained and remains unknown.
- Older R2 retains **17 passes and one failure** across 18 attempts,
including eight both-pass native/legacy Codex/Claude pairs. Its OpenCode
blank-page failure led to the service-worker repair. R2 is historical
evidence: master changed the native fixed prompt and removed duplicate
wake environment data afterward.
- The September 24 CI run initially failed one unrelated preview
readiness test (`ECONNREFUSED` on its local fixture). Its test and
production code match master. Isolated local verification passed **28
tests, 3 skipped**. One unchanged CI retry passed the full shard: **831
passed, 1 skipped**, including all **31 preview-exposure tests**. The
aggregate CI gate passed afterward. The precise startup cause remains
unknown; a port race is a hypothesis, not a proved cause.

### Limits

The original wider profile/workflow matrix, repeated trials, and remote
Daytona qualification are incomplete. These results support a focused
merge recommendation, not statistical equivalence or universal harness
qualification. Some usage receipts are missing in both variants, so no
token or dollar savings are claimed. The $500 ceiling was preserved
using conservative allowances; failed attempts and unknown charges
remain in the ledger.

Reproduce the focused additions with `pnpm exec vitest run
packages/adapters/claude-local/src/server/acp.test.ts` and `pnpm
--filter @paperclipai/paperclip-runner exec vitest run
src/native-session-runtime.test.ts`. Full checks use `pnpm -r
typecheck`, `pnpm test:run`, `pnpm build`, and the separate runner
checks. Paid evals require the frozen definitions, profiles, and
credentials; do not use `--all` as a substitute for the selected cases.

## Risks

- Context placement changes can affect model behavior. Deterministic
checks cover the selected paths, but live qualification remains
incomplete.
- The stale-question guard can reject a request when queued human
comments arrived during the run. This is intended.
- New stored inputs and model envelopes retain compatibility readers for
older active sessions.
- Custom templates may intentionally repeat content.
- Removing a model-facing working-directory sentence does not change
filesystem, command, sandbox, or permission configuration.
- The worker bypass applies only to same-origin development module
paths. Cache-policy tests preserve private-response handling and
production asset caching. Mounted HTTP fixture changes remain test-only.
- This PR does not claim measured token savings or statistical
equivalence across every harness.

## Model Used

OpenAI Codex, exact model gpt-6-astra, with repository tools and code
execution. Bounded supporting work used gpt-5.6-luna and gpt-6-luna. The
serving context-window size is not exposed in 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 described the issue in-PR using the required issue fields
- [x] I have not referenced internal/instance-local Paperclip issues or
links
- [x] My branch name describes the change and contains no internal
ticket id
- [x] I have run the focused local checks and they pass
- [x] I have added or updated tests where applicable
- [x] I have updated relevant documentation to reflect these changes
- [x] I have considered and documented risks above
- [x] All current-head Paperclip CI gates are green
- [x] Greptile is 5/5 with no open P2s, recommendations, or follow-ups
for the current head
- [x] I will address all Greptile and reviewer comments before
requesting merge

---------

Co-authored-by: Paperclip <noreply@paperclip.ing>
2026-09-28 14:49:14 -05:00

15 KiB

Runner E2E security for a public repository

This suite can spend provider money, expose selected local and workflow 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. Keep the list equal to the owners of .github/** in .github/CODEOWNERS. For example, use [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 when the workflow definition does not come from the default branch. A trusted dispatcher may name any branch in paperclipai/paperclip as the code under test. The authorization job resolves that branch through the GitHub API and passes only its immutable commit SHA to a credential-free target-lock job. That job checks out the commit, regenerates pnpm-lock.yaml once with lifecycle scripts disabled and lockfile-only mode, then uploads the file under a run-attempt-scoped artifact ID. Catalog, image, shared-build, provider-pack, and paid test jobs download that exact artifact by ID, verify its recorded SHA-256, and restore it before setup or a frozen dependency install. The lock resolver receives no provider credentials and must never run repository lifecycle scripts. The shared-build and provider-pack jobs also receive no provider credentials and disable dependency lifecycle scripts; they package outputs with SHA-256 sidecars that consumers verify before extraction. The paid test job installs with lifecycle scripts disabled, and materializes the exact pinned OpenCode executable from its lockfile-verified optional package without invoking package lifecycle code. Provider secrets are scoped only to the final test step rather than dependency setup. Report sanitization and AWS history publication explicitly use the trusted workflow commit and do not consume the target lockfile. Never run the workflow definition from the target branch.

The workflows 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

Explicit Grok subscription campaigns may select GROK_AUTH_JSON from the same protected paid environment. Deliver it only to that subscription profile's paid test step. Prefer a dedicated test-account login and refresh it before a campaign. The fixture stores only the selected login in its disposable company home, rejects ambient/redirected homes, and removes the login during teardown. Token fragments and account identifiers inside its JSON join the evidence redaction set. The subscription suite remains manual-only and never falls back to XAI_API_KEY.

Create runner-e2e-paid, restrict deployments to the default branch, and put only OPENAI_API_KEY, ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, OPENROUTER_API_KEY, XAI_API_KEY, and DAYTONA_API_KEY in it. KIMI_MODEL_API_KEY remains a local-only catalog name for pending explicit profiles and is intentionally absent from the workflow environment. Product E2E pending-profile admission remains gated separately. 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, target-lock, 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. On disposable GitHub Linux runners with Ubuntu's unprivileged-user-namespace restriction, the authorized default-branch workflow provisions an AppArmor profile before provider credentials are exposed. The profile is attached to the exact lockfile-pinned Codex executable. It grants userns so Codex can construct its filesystem sandbox; it does not disable the kernel restriction or Codex's workspace policy. Setup fails before invoking a model if the noninteractive profile load fails. Target-controlled tests only probe the existing sandbox and never invoke sudo or load host policy. This host-only profile disappears with the ephemeral runner. See Ubuntu's namespace restriction documentation. Local developer machines are never modified by this setup. Legacy Codex fixtures disable optional shell-environment snapshots to avoid persisting credentials; other suites retain the persisted-state scanner. The first-task suite omits private home/workspace credential-persistence scanning so its evaluation focuses on onboarding behavior. Artifact redaction and publication scanning remain in force for every suite. 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.

The context-integrity catalog lists six pending Kimi/Grok cells for discovery: two cases each across legacy-kimi-cli, legacy-kimi-acp, and legacy-grok. The launcher and direct Playwright runner reject these profiles before loading credentials. Pi has no qualified model source and is not cataloged. Admission remains blocked until identity, authentication, skills, session, and billing evidence is qualified together.

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, reusable runner builds, and Daytona image builds 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 GitHub-hosted ubuntu-latest runner and its lower concurrency ceiling. The workflow chooses between those two reviewed literal labels; it never evaluates a configured runner label.

Daytona image builds depend on successful campaign authorization and keep the existing GHCR publication and signing permissions. They receive no provider credentials and do not enter the runner-e2e-paid environment.

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 who can authorize secret access. The paid workflow still has only schedule and manual triggers, requires its trusted definition to come from the protected default branch, requires allowlisted stable actor IDs before checkout, and repeats that authorization as the first matrix step. Provider credentials come only from the protected runner-e2e-paid environment. The fleet selector is an exact workflow literal; the only repository-controlled routing input is its boolean rollout switch, so configuration cannot redirect a secret-bearing job to an arbitrary runner.

The optional target branch is code, not workflow authority. A CODEOWNER who dispatches a target branch explicitly authorizes that branch's selected test process to receive the cell's scoped provider credential. The workflow resolves the target only inside the same repository, pins one SHA for the campaign, and checks it out only after authorization. Target-controlled code cannot replace the report sanitizer or the AWS history publisher. Fork refs and target-controlled workflow definitions do not enter this path.

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 trusted runner PNG screenshots are expected public data. Each public screenshot must carry the explicit public-runner-fixture marker in the normalized result. This includes a failure.png capture. Screenshot paths must be safe PNG basenames and must be tied to the exact normalized execution ID and attempt. The runner capture helper accepts only the exact issue route for the live fixture that the harness created. Other issue routes, credential pages, setup pages, and administration pages fail closed. The CloudFront-backed S3 history also publishes one synthetic campaign-summary PNG generated by trusted publisher code solely from fixed catalog labels and sanitized numeric/status fields. Video, archives, generated Playwright/blob/HTML report trees, SVG or other active content, credentials, Paperclip homes, databases, workspaces, master keys, raw/unredacted logs, unmarked images, and unallowlisted files are not public. Per-attempt JSON snapshots, result copies, logs, Markdown, and text files stay in the retained Actions artifact. Credential redaction does not remove hidden reasoning or provider session identities, so a text extension never admits a file to the public bundle. Graded results remain in normalized-results.json.

The packaged evidence uploaded as a 30-day GitHub Actions artifact has a different, broader boundary. Text is exact-value and key-shape scanned and redacted. PNG and WebM are raw-byte scanned; SVG is rejected during packaging because it is active content. Raster pixels cannot be exhaustively secret-scanned by bytes, so fixture authors must treat every marked capture as public and must never extend the allowed task route to credentials, secrets, private user data, or other non-public content. Adding or changing a marked capture requires review of the visible page state. Videos remain access-controlled.

Before permanent publication, the campaign publisher creates a separate S3 stage and retains only result PNGs with the explicit public-runner-fixture marker under evidence/. This applies even to malformed JSON and renamed process logs. Original packaged evidence and grades remain unchanged. It then launches publisher-only Chromium with networking blocked to render one public-images/campaign-summary.png. That fixed-path PNG is capped at 12 MiB and its signature is validated. 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. Videos, archives, raw/unallowlisted logs, SVG, undeclared images, generated reports, and symlinks fail closed or are removed before the immutable manifest is calculated.

GitHub Pages is built from a second stage without the synthetic summary PNG but with the same trusted-fixture screenshot allowlist. A leak detected by the existing packager scan 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.

agent-chat-qualification.worker-crash-retry is local-only and explicit-only. Linux with Python pidfd support is required; unsupported hosts fail before signalling. The fault target comes from the public run detail, must be native and running, and must have an exact --run-id command argument. PID 1, the harness PID, noninteger PIDs, remote profiles, and mismatched identities are refused. The fixture workspace must be within the disposable instance root. The helper pins an owned pidfd, verifies the exact run argument and recorded process start ticks again after evidence capture, and signals through that handle. PID reuse cannot redirect the signal. This is one specific process signal, never a name-based or machine-wide process kill. The bounded fixture command is released even on failure; normal instance cleanup still owns all disposable processes and files. No credentials enter the prompt, fault metadata, or structured grading fixtures.