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PaperClipAI/doc/evals.md
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DottaandPaperclip 84aa989bf9 Preserve native sessions through legacy workspace enrollment (#18943)
## Thinking Path

> - Paperclip is the open source app people use to manage AI agents for
work.
> - A native session retains its workspace and provider session across
turns.
> - An ephemeral web server must restore those files without its
predecessor's disk.
> - Legacy enrollment changes the workspace authority and can change
both workspace addresses.
> - The retained provider backup checks those addresses as part of its
identity.
> - This pull request preserves the exact addresses in a verified
migration receipt.
> - The benefit is that the next turn can use the original session after
enrollment.

## Linked Issues or Issue Description

Refs #18932, merged as `612d9931a6`. This pull request builds on that
all-Runner durability change. Related: #18918 fixes concurrent workspace
preservation locks. This change covers identity preservation during
offline enrollment.

## What Changed

- The native workspace migration owner records the selected session
bindings in the successful workspace migration operation.
- Runtime selection retains the original logical address only for the
exact agent, task and session.
- Remote workspace preparation restores the original provider address.
It refuses conflicting targets, forged receipts and occupied unowned
roots.
- The environment owner includes the migration operation in the reusable
lease fingerprint. Warm policy stays warm and receives a fresh
allocation through normal lease cleanup.
- Exact migration evidence permits the existing verified provider backup
to restore into that fresh warm allocation.
- Preserve verified provider allocation files through a normalized,
lease-bound digest receipt. Unknown files and altered markers remain
refused; interrupted publication is retryable.
- Retain legacy managed-instruction session fingerprints using the exact
imported content hash and recorded paths, preserving all other
configuration and credential checks.
- Migrate existing local skill archive/manifest objects through upload
claims, readback verification and receipt compare-and-swap; retain
original objects and IDs.
- Add explicit two-turn browser qualification for every released native
Daytona profile, with warm and per-turn variants. The production
maintenance entry runs offline. The old home is deleted only after a
verified export and successor readiness. The oracle checks provider
identity, native session, addresses, reference bytes, question and final
document.

## Verification

- Full repository typecheck passed at `b12ecd823e`. The production
session fix passed 198 session/credential tests. Full repository build
passed at `94bb917947`. The final Rust-only provider fix passed 57 ACPX
provider tests and the exact Linux release build.
- Workspace and transport checks passed: 117 transport/workspace tests,
six final real PostgreSQL migration boundary cases, 178 environment
tests, 539 Daytona tests (eight skips), and the native warm-backup
admission control.
- Local skill migration passed eight PostgreSQL/S3 tests (one existing
opt-in skip). Failed readback retains the source. Successful readback
still works after deletion of the old home.
- Latest Product E2E typecheck and 38 focused harness tests pass.
Earlier catalog/admission/report checks passed. Twelve unrelated
support-test failures reproduce on unchanged base `1a39dea9aa`; these
are not reported as passing.
- Live Codex per-turn at `2d5bb9a6d1` retained the native and provider
sessions, both workspace paths and exact reference bytes after deletion
of the old home. It completed the task and delivered its saved document
and original reference. Its original failure was an output-count grading
defect. The corrected grader passes all 21 checks against retained,
hashed evidence; the original result remains unchanged.
- Live OpenCode per-turn and Codex warm at harness `94bb917947` pass all
21 product checks. Their launcher cleanup failed because a read-only
diagnostic observer kept its disposable database open. The observer now
closes before ordinary database cleanup; a no-provider reproduction
confirms the fix. All owned sandboxes were independently verified
absent, child keys revoked and buckets removed. Original failed campaign
dispositions remain unchanged.
- Claude at `94bb917947` kept its sessions and reference bytes but
omitted the final clickable document link. That user-delivery failure
remains recorded. The fixture now explicitly asks for the link and
records migration evidence before checking navigation. The fresh Claude
attempt at `b12ecd823e` passed both strict migration checks: exact
provider/native session, both paths, original file bytes and
independently downloaded attachment. Its full browser workflow failed
again: it requested unnecessary confirmation, used the answer sentence
as the reference, and omitted the clickable document link. This is
retained as a failed user-workflow result, not a full pass.
- Earlier live failures exposed and reproduced the skill-object,
fresh-allocation marker and managed-instruction fingerprint bugs. The
fixes retain original identity checks. No provider session reset or
accounting bypass was used.
- The real Grok continuation at `b12ecd823e` failed before provider
execution because its immutable-instruction attach policy rejected
relocated registered file copies. A no-provider regression reproduced
the exact rejection. `b05ba3728a` selects the existing strict
authenticated asset-path policy for Grok; content digests, unknown
context fields, session/workspace identity and same-run mutations remain
enforced. The regression and all 57 ACPX provider controls pass. The
Grok browser migration now passes all 21 checks with the b05 Linux
Runner, including provider identity, exact reference bytes and final
user output; the launcher also reports successful cleanup.
- `24fabf1d81` applies the same policy to released ACPX Codex after a
second no-provider reproduction. All 58 ACPX provider controls and the
final Linux release build pass. Its live browser migration passes all 21
checks on the final binary, including exact original session/file
preservation and completed user output.
- The full native-session executor suite passes all 1,121 tests after
updating its existing lease database fixture for the migration-receipt
join. The prior CI failure was this unsupported test-double method; the
production guard still rejects ordinary unproven recovery. CI and
Greptile 5/5 passed at `ca1e0d5fe6`. The first CI attempt lost several
workers and had one rotated-recovery transport failure; its seven
descriptor cases passed locally, and the single unchanged retry passed.
The original failure remains recorded. Staging enrollment has not
started. Initial offline enrollment and subsequent rolling availability
are separate checks.

- The final review follow-up adds real runtime-selection PostgreSQL
cases for exact, different-session and absent receipts, plus
executor-level warm restoration that copies actual backup files and
verifies provider identity and the new lease stamp. Both complete
affected suites pass (1,172 tests), and full repository typecheck
passes. Removing either production migration connection independently
makes its new positive case fail; both source files were restored
byte-for-byte after these negative controls.

- Final commit `0971d373a3` passes all 63 checks (57 successes, five
expected skips, one neutral); Greptile is 5/5 and every review thread is
resolved.

## Risks

- An identity conflict blocks enrollment and keeps the original files.
It does not silently reset the session.
- A new migration generation retires a reusable lease through its
existing owner. The original sandbox must finish normal cleanup before
reuse proceeds.
- Initial enrollment has an offline step. The separate rolling suites
prove uninterrupted deploy behavior after enrollment.
- This adds no schema migration and changes no provider credentials or
accounting gate.

## Model Used

OpenAI Codex, GPT-6 family. The exact serving model build and context
window are not exposed in this session. The agent used reasoning,
terminal tools, code edits, PostgreSQL/filesystem tests and isolated
live browser qualification.

## 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>
2026-11-04 04:43:56 -06:00

42 KiB
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Paperclip evaluation guide

The explicit deployment-targeted saved agent instructions journey checks an owned agent’s ordinary UI save, persisted instruction bytes, one current-run output, and restoration. The task request omits its instruction-only reference. It reuses the existing Product E2E target and report path; local controls do not establish a staging pass.

The explicit-only verified API artifact transfer cell checks a native Codex agent on Daytona installing an authorized saved API response and delivering unchanged bytes. The oracle binds the source capture, tool completion and independent attachment download, including the complete 388131-byte synthetic description. Registration and oracle calibration are separate from live provider qualification.

The explicit-only Kimi Code qualification suite registers twenty candidate cells across local and Daytona. It reuses the browser, semantic interaction, file/artifact, Stop and continuation oracles with scoped candidate admission and an encrypted Code credential. Registration does not establish a live pass, native question/plan support or usable cost accounting.

The public directory calls full-product testing E2E tests. Suites describe what is tested; deployment targets describe which app instance was tested. QA smoke is a named selection of existing journeys against QA, and appears in the same campaign history as other E2E runs. Agent execution (local or Daytona), provider, model and profile are independent filters. Browser-only journeys need no agent or model. Historical records without target metadata remain explicitly "Not recorded" rather than being assigned an inferred environment.

The history sidebar includes the current suite catalog and retained historical suites. Each suite has its latest matching run and latest full run, with full coverage determined from the recorded suite definition, selection and execution counts. An unexecuted full selection remains unfinished, and a subset can pass without qualifying as a full suite run; failed full selections remain visible. Changing a model filter does not redefine the suite's recorded coverage. Existing runner-e2e URLs, test IDs, commands, and measurement timestamps remain stable. Runner protocol evals remain a separate category because they test the runner/provider against a mock control plane.

Sidebar suite links open that suite's campaign history with other filters cleared. The Suite dropdown combines with the current filters instead. Explicit URLs retain their selected filters; when a suite is absent from a preset, the empty state explains the combination and links to the suite's runs. Active filters have blue borders and tinted fields. The filter toolbar counts active values, including a count beside More filters for collapsed controls. Reset all filters clears every campaign filter and the sidebar suite search.

node --import ./cli/node_modules/tsx/dist/loader.mjs tests/runner-e2e/history-browser.browser.mjs exercises the history UI using synthetic metadata and Chromium, with no model calls. It checks suite coverage, correlated suite/target/model/execution filters, saved QA selections, URL history and mobile navigation. Install the existing Playwright Chromium dependency before running. For presentation-only refreshes, node --import ./cli/node_modules/tsx/dist/loader.mjs tests/runner-e2e/history-refresh.ts --history <history.json> --output <directory> renders an existing history file. Its optional --public-campaign, --public-url and --preset arguments import a reviewed public measurement without replacing existing campaigns. Private Cloud bundles are rejected. The output contains only index HTML and history/pointer JSON; it does not upload evidence or change retained campaign bundles.

The explicit-only Cursor Cloud native cells cover task/artifact delivery, same-agent follow-up, active-run UI Stop and semantic Plan revision/approval from a local controller. They require explicit model/repository/key and a callback-only public HTTPS proxy. Controlled tests and discovery do not qualify hosted work. These cells remain private because raw evidence can contain provider session IDs.

The explicit-only chat feature evals promote two natural-language task scenarios into local native Codex subscription and OpenCode Product E2E cells. They verify saving an unstarted task and delegating a saved announcement back to chat, using ordinary production instructions, real browser messages and independent state/provenance checks. A separately selected native OpenCode/DeepSeek1017 backlog cell supplied historical TestOps integration acceptance with the same oracle and original bounds. Its former smoke plan and the three-case completion pilot are retired; their cases and measurements remain in history. The full-catalog TestOps lane maps all 244 YAML scenarios into a separate candidate-scoped plan. Its app and fixtures use a preserved immutable catalog revision; trusted workflow helpers run from master. Registration, known gaps and private prerequisites remain distinct from measured results. This lane does not qualify the current master app or reset earlier campaign accounting.

The explicit-only Daytona restart continuity journey extends the existing native restart oracle to a 300-second controller outage and another replacement after completion, using the recorded Claude and Codex models in disposable development fixtures. It requires same-process adoption, saved files and finalization without replay; local regression checks and catalog discovery are separate from live acceptance.

The explicit-only GitHub review bot journey converts the Ponytail walkthrough into attended App setup, scoped installation, automatic PR review, and independent two-service checks. It supports attached self-hosted/Cloud targets and separately selected local/Daytona agents. Account and credential bindings stay in the private eval repo; registration and oracle tests do not establish a completed live pass or unattended CI qualification.

The deployment-targeted question-answer-resume journey reuses the classic two-question scenario and native continuation oracle on an attached target. It checks the actual board answers, one to three bound work runs, an agent-authored task document and browser readback after reload. A typed reference may use a text field or the native card's explicit written-answer control; a predefined option cannot replace the exact typed answer. It accepts provider questions and durable questions proven by an applied semantic receipt or an immutable completed native API mutation receipt. It does not qualify named-tool selection. Its provider owns target setup, usage and cleanup. Registration and local calibration do not establish a fresh Cloud pass or inclusion in a recurring selection.

The explicit-only necessary free-text question journey checks one essential input, the rendered prompt and context, the real answer, one bound continuation, and an exact saved confirmation. Its four development cells use the recorded Codex and Claude models. Registration and calibration do not establish Slack, staging authentication, warm lifecycle, or live qualification.

The explicit followup-while-running Product journey checks a saved message during independently observed native work, one attributed reply with the late requirement, and persistence after reload. Its attached and managed targets share the same story and permit one steered run or one normal successor. Registration and calibration are separate from a live staging pass.

The explicit dependency continuation journey checks a finite blocked wait and one automatic native continuation after a browser-completed blocker. Local evidence controls are separate from a deployed QA pass.

Reusable Product journeys add explicit deployment targets and starting-state recipes. The shared task-properties journey and task-document create/edit/reopen journey use no model; Cloud onboarding supplies reusable verified state. The document journey checks exact saved content and both revision records through independent API reads. The explicit chat-continuity selection verifies browser reload/reopen, prompt-hidden recall, ordinary /new reset, fresh native context and retained history against an attached target. It requires a fresh owned agent with no prior work runs and uses three provider turns plus one synthetic reset row; it does not restart a shared stack. Cloud fleet operations and trusted CI remain private. Local eval gateway qualification does not qualify Cloud routes, and these selections stay outside --all.

The deployment-targeted saved skill journey checks one company skill assigned by key, its exact admitted immutable version, a bound native source read/load, and a run-authored saved result from skill-only inputs. It uses the reusable Product journey target and remains unqualified until a real target run passes.

The explicit-only case handoff workflow contains arithmetic and receipt smoke cells for a same-task round trip among three native agents using real case/task APIs, saved documents, handoff receipts, and browser readback. Receipt smoke has an explicit terminal handoff to done on its fourth run, proving case closure through normal task completion without a fifth provider run. It also has an initial task-owned brief supplied at kickoff through initialDocuments, ordinary native task document reads/writes, and case-page rollup readback. Earlier case-document campaign results remain preserved and do not qualify this subsequent document ownership change. The suite has separately selectable local Codex API-key and subscription profiles with the same model and limits. The API profile uses an encrypted company-secret reference; the subscription profile receives only an explicitly supplied private login fixture. The original arithmetic cell remains subscription-only. The receipt cell declares exactly four task work runs, 90-second work-run limits, a five-minute attempt, and 100-cent accounted-work budgets. Initial agent setup also performs production hello probes outside heartbeat counts, budget accounting and the work-run usage report. Up to three initial probes are expected; their detailed tokens and cost are unavailable, and a timeout need not cancel an in-flight probe immediately. These limits do not establish an absolute provider inference cap, and unknown setup usage is not free. The original arithmetic cell retains its own limits. Service tests and workflow discovery remain distinct from a completed provider run.

The Slack connector probe catalog organizes eleven manual model acceptance probes and a selector for existing deterministic regressions (pnpm test:slack-connector). It is not a registered model campaign; transport fixtures do not prove that an agent chooses a tool or that a real Slack interaction completes.

The explicit-only live provider connection suite is a Product E2E workflow for fresh subscription/API-key/gateway connections, with attended login and independent artifact checks against local or staging targets.

The explicit-only Antigravity additional-agent journey converts the saved-subscription setup and two-turn file walkthrough into one local native cell. It measures agent creation through the ordinary UI, instruction-dependent downloaded bytes, same native conversation, durable Done lineage and owned runtime cleanup. Current support requires an attached self-hosted loopback macOS ARM64 candidate; fresh OAuth, Cloud/remote execution and global release qualification are separate gates.

The bounded personal Muse receiver probe uses ordinary task APIs and retained native receipts to measure unattended receiver behavior. It is a separate manual qualification probe, not a registered Product E2E campaign. Synthetic receiver tests cannot qualify personal Muse; real setup, clarification and fresh-conversation collaboration remain separate release gates.

Paperclip has two live eval families with different questions, owners, and evidence. Choose the family before selecting a model, profile, or case.

The explicit-only native instruction consolidation comparison uses six Product E2E cells per source variant. It measures the completion constraint reduction separately from the earlier native tool-description trial. Provider-free start/resume payload capture is a byte measurement; behavioral qualification requires the original paired live outcomes and retained content. Neither source admission nor a scripted pass proves model behavior.

  • Runner Evals: real Runner/provider behavior against a seeded mock control plane. Definitions live in paperclip-evals/evals/paperclip-runner; see the direct live protocol evals.
  • Product E2E Evals: real browser, Paperclip server, database, Runner, provider, and (where selected) Daytona, using an isolated instance and grading oracle. See tests/runner-e2e and Everyday Workflows.

The chat scenario catalog is a planning inventory within Product E2E: natural user requests, assumed context and expected outcomes linked to the feature and agent-access maps. It includes conditional setup, permission, approval and recovery journeys. Its YAML files are not registered runnable cells and contribute no passing coverage or scores.

Runner Evals answer whether a real runner/provider can perform a bounded protocol operation against the expected control-plane contract. Product E2E Evals answer whether a person can complete a product workflow through the real Paperclip surfaces and whether the resulting artifact and state are usable. The names describe the system under test; “headless” is an execution option, not an eval category.

The explicit Product E2E completion-updates suite compares onboarding and idle, busy, multiple-task, and restart Agent Chat handoffs on native Claude/Codex. It separates mechanical completion delivery/result access from semantic review of the retained answer; see the probe contract.

The explicit-only task-titles suite checks that production guidance causes a real native agent to name prompt-only standard/Ask tasks early, while preserving user-supplied titles. Its oracle correlates browser creation, native tool receipts, durable titles, audit ownership, and the reloaded task UI; fixture prompts contain no naming instructions.

The explicit-only native connection guidance suite adds neutral decline prompts, same-task run-attributed explanations, and measured no-use controls across three native local profiles. Its fifteen configured cells are preparation for future matched instruction comparisons, not a live result. Historical Everyday cases and production prompts are preserved.

Selecting a family

Pi's explicit-only pi-controls Product suite tests Stop while native permission is unanswered and browser-originated same-turn steering, locally and on Daytona. Its fixture contract separates control acknowledgment, actual message consumption and owned process retirement. The current Pi matrix has 26 explicit cells (13 local and 13 Daytona), including these four controls, pending-native-question controller restart, and a Daytona-only exact-Pi-child provider-death journey. Provider death must expire the original unanswered card and reject stale replies without a replacement run; any durable fallback is distinct from restoration. File editing also requires native edit/validation events and a registered artifact download. All remain unqualified until measured on the exact candidate runtime and harness.

Use Runner Evals for a runner protocol, adapter, transport, native session, tool grant, or one-turn provider qualification question. The workflow checks out an exact paperclip-evals revision, builds the Runner and viewer, runs a live roster, and renders the canonical Evalbook report. The control plane is a seeded test authority, so a passing result does not prove browser UX, production server behavior, database persistence, Daytona behavior, or a real third-party mutation.

Use Product E2E Evals for browser interaction, issue/task lifecycle, approval and clarification UI, project/repository selection, persistence over a controller restart, artifact delivery, billing/evidence behavior, or runner continuity in local or Daytona environments. The harness creates a fresh Paperclip instance per cell and uses public APIs and the production browser surface. The suite's Everyday Workflows are Product E2E even when their results are imported into Evalbook.

Do not combine a partial Runner campaign and a partial Product E2E campaign into one score. A campaign is comparable when its definition/grader, model/profile, environment, and contract match. The evaluated Paperclip revision may intentionally differ for a before/after fix comparison; record it as a comparison axis.

Ownership and codepaths

Runner Evals are owned by the Runner/evals maintainers. Definitions, rosters, case prompts, and the report program live in the sibling private repository paperclipai/paperclip-evals; Runner integration, viewer, aggregation, and publication code live under packages/paperclip-runner and the runner-protocol-live-evals.yml workflow. The public-facing report uses the same Evalbook renderer and Runner Lab viewer as the trusted report after sanitization.

Product E2E Evals are owned by the runner E2E maintainers. The catalog and harness are under tests/runner-e2e; the package scripts are test:e2e:runner, test:e2e:runner:unit, test:e2e:runner:typecheck, and test:e2e:runner:report. README.md, FIXTURES.md, SECURITY.md, and EVERYDAY-WORKFLOWS.md are the detailed sources of truth. The harness starts the server and embedded database, creates the company/agent/task through the real APIs, drives Chromium, and invokes the selected local or Daytona runner.

The explicit-only agent-chat-hardening Product E2E suite covers native chat recovery, hiring, status evidence, and review handoff on local and selected warm Daytona paths. Its fixture contract distinguishes startup cancellation from active response cancellation and HTTP send replay from ambiguous provider action recovery. Select it explicitly; --all excludes it.

The explicit-only production hiring templates suite adds two local native Codex/Claude cells. It exercises API-created production CEO defaults, an explicitly requested hiring skill/reference read, a permanent coder hire, independently computed saved JSON fixtures and worker reuse. Each cell requires five work turns and admits at most two strictly attributed server task-completion turns. Every actual run remains counted; unknown or extra-work turns fail. Source/read coverage and workflow outcome are separate: missing read provenance leaves the candidate/baseline pair uncomparable even if work succeeds. Baseline bundles and coder examples derive from their own source revision, without requiring candidate wording or length.

The explicit-only context-integrity Product E2E suite covers ordered public comment continuation and explicit invocation of an assigned pinned skill across the seven selected legacy/native local profiles. Select it by suite or exact execution ID because --all excludes explicit-only suites. Each cell applies a 1,000-cent company and agent budget hard stop before task creation and records both limits in its evidence.

The explicit-only stock-harness suite reuses skill, ordered-continuation, and chat-restart journeys across eight local legacy/native profiles with production-default hires. It closes the custom QA manual coverage gap. Its required credential-free prerequisite maps vendor instruction layering, the tiny hire bundle, and shared startup/resume reductions to executable checks. The 24 live cells are configured; no live qualification is claimed from their setup or unit calibration.

The explicit-only agent-chat-stories suite covers the experimental settings lifecycle for a configured native agent and follow-ups during active work. Its fixture-driven file wait and persisted-plan oracle are documented in the Product E2E guide. It does not qualify the native onboarding wizard or change the native API-tool rollout defaults.

The explicit-only grok-qualification and grok-subscription-qualification Product suites exercise Grok Build with API and company subscription authentication respectively. Keep their results separate; the subscription fixture seeds an explicitly supplied login and does not qualify interactive login. See the Grok fixture contract.

The explicit Direct blocker guidance suite checks the legacy coordination skill against human authority, missing hiring permission, and requester scope decisions through saved browser interactions.

Validation ladder

The native Codex Daytona recover-controller cell in Everyday Workflows requires active process and lease continuity, native receipt continuity and workspace finalization. See the restart evidence contract. Catalog discovery and deterministic calibration do not establish live recovery.

The explicit-only public MCP suite evaluates paid assistant delegation, later retrieval, feedback, review, uncertain retries and permission boundaries. It uses the Product E2E fixtures, launcher, evidence packaging and dashboard, with separate external-assistant and team-worker billing. The 2026-10-01 results retain two complete model matrices, provenance, costs and the earlier failure history.

Start with credential-free checks and a catalog listing. For Product E2E:

pnpm test:e2e:runner:typecheck
pnpm test:e2e:runner:unit
pnpm test:e2e:runner -- --list

For one explicitly selected local cell, configure only the credentials named by that cell in .env.runner-e2e.local, then run a narrow ID:

pnpm test:e2e:runner -- --id core-compatibility.runner-codex.local.message-marker

Use the selectors documented in the runner E2E README for a suite, profile, case, group, or environment. Daytona needs the immutable image digest and DAYTONA_API_KEY; follow the README and fixture security guide. --all excludes manual suites such as everyday-workflows. Select that suite explicitly; use a narrow selector while developing a fixture.

For Runner Evals, the narrowest useful local validation is the report program's help/validation path and the deterministic Runner checks documented in runner-workflow-evals.md. Hosted direct live runs must use the default-branch workflow, an exact 40 character evals_sha, an explicitly selected roster (or the maintained enabled all campaign), and the protected paid environment. The complete hosted command is intentionally kept in the workflow and direct live protocol guide. Live provider runs can spend money; use the existing workflow authorization and the user's stated scope when selecting them.

Failure taxonomy

Record the primary failure class and preserve the evidence that supports it.

  • Product failure: evidence shows Paperclip or Runner behavior violates the authored case or a hard invariant, such as wrong task state, missing approval gate, lost persistence, bad artifact, or incorrect protocol operation.
  • Model/provider behavior failure: the provider turn completed with usable evidence but the model gave the wrong answer, ignored an interaction, failed to complete the authored operation, or violated a semantic assertion. It is scored as behavior, not silently retried as infrastructure.
  • Grading/evidence failure: the case or matcher cannot establish its claim, a required recording/screenshot/result is malformed, or the report contract is invalid. Fix the harness or grader before interpreting the score.
  • Infrastructure failure: the evidence points to provider/profile unavailability, transport admission failure, service startup failure, a missing credential/image, or inability to produce usable evidence. Startup, transport, and timeout symptoms can instead be product defects when evidence implicates Paperclip or Runner; classify from the observed failure and supported cause, rather than the symptom name alone. Preserve the artifact.

Missing usage or price data means unknown, not free. Keep provider-reported costs separate from estimates, and include retry costs when available. Latency, cleanup, billing coverage, and unpriced usage are dimensions of the result and should remain visible alongside the primary class. A timeout after successful product state reads can be a product behavior failure; a failed server-health read may be infrastructure, but inspect its cause. Use the family-specific classifier and read the attempt evidence before changing an analytical label.

Evidence, provenance, and history

Polling latency is an interval rather than an exact first-detection time. The Product E2E timing contract keeps last-absent/first-present bounds, resolution, strict or inclusive targets, and pass/fail/inconclusive timing verdicts alongside the unchanged workflow grade.

Retained result snapshots and dated measurement reports belong in paperclip-evals; application tests, Product E2E fixtures/graders, and executable scenario inventories remain in this repository. Keep a compact results index with immutable archive links and public report links, as in the lifecycle baseline. The private archive is not a dependency of app test execution. Keep large logs, traces, and videos in the existing campaign artifact storage.

An Evalbook report is a presentation of immutable attempt records, not the source of truth. Keep the campaign ID, Paperclip commit, paperclip-evals commit, catalog/roster or definition fingerprint, model/profile, environment, grader version, selected cells, retries, and provider/runtime usage with the report. Public projections follow each family's reviewed allowlist and may include sanitized fixture conversation, named tool outcomes, screenshots, and structured evidence intended for public history. Credentials, secrets, private data, raw unredacted records, and hidden reasoning stay out of public projections.

Distinguish a complete campaign from a partial campaign. A narrow selector, manual diagnostic, missing cell, or infrastructure retry can be useful evidence without being a qualification run. History should retain both, with explicit coverage and completeness, while trend and latest-green views compare only compatible complete campaigns. Refreshing an existing report from retained evidence has zero provider calls and is a new presentation of the old measurement, not a new model run.

Product E2E test details and screenshot galleries show the recorded application URL when it is available. The worker environment, such as Daytona, does not imply an application URL. Public projections can retain the reviewed URL in targetUrl. Test details put recorded checks first and keep raw usage, timing, and startup evidence under Diagnostics. Optional presentation metadata in a retained campaign supplies its title, description, notes, and evidence links inside the shared report shell when the dashboard is regenerated.

Standard runner Product E2E attempts also retain a sanitized taskChat recording for Test details: task briefs, complete saved messages, requests and answers, and native agent progress. Related task threads are separate; incomplete capture is labeled. This automatic capture runs before teardown on success and failure. See the Product E2E evidence contract.

Existing public histories are available at Runner protocol history and Runner Product E2E history. The consolidated eval hub is at pages.paperclip.ing/evals.

For a repeatable workflow, use the matching skill: paperclip-evals, add-runner-eval, or add-product-e2e-eval.

Diagnose failures before buying another campaign

Use this loop to turn eval failures into product improvements. The unit of work is a broken user outcome or invariant, not an individual red cell.

  1. Freeze the evidence. Record the inspected application revision and each campaign's evaluated revision, definition/grader fingerprint, model/profile, environment, exact selected IDs, attempts, and usage coverage. Read the history feed and retained attempt records before launching models. A report refresh, skipped workflow, passing unit suite, or old-definition green cell is not a new live measurement. Inventory explicit-only suites separately from --all.
  2. Reconstruct the failed boundary. Read durable task state, interactions, event chronology, source/worker identity, delivered output, and the failing assertion. State whether the test reached the boundary it claims to test. Separate observed failure, machine class, analytical cause, and confidence. A cancelled queued wake does not by itself prove lost work; a failed decline assertion does not prove unauthorized execution. A saved artifact does not prove the user received a correct completion update.
  3. Group by cause and product contract. Join cells only when their evidence supports the same mechanism. Check for already-merged fixes and definition corrections before proposing new work. Keep product defects, provider/model behavior, grading defects, infrastructure, and unexercised boundaries distinct. Preserve the original grades when attribution changes.
  4. Design the smallest general correction. Name the desired user behavior, the authoritative state/transaction or provider boundary that owns it, the affected callers, and the existing guarantees that must survive. Check it against PRODUCT.md and SPEC-implementation.md. A change to an intentional product rule is a contract change, not an excuse to delete its guard. Avoid case-name branches, phrase-specific prompts, unconditional retries, or weakening approval, ownership, cancellation, and budget gates to get green.
  5. Prove the mechanism cheaply. Calibrate a grader against correct and plausible wrong retained evidence. Reproduce a product race with scripted providers or service tests. Pair every proposed fix with a regression that exercises the opposite boundary (for example, eligible delivery versus revoked access, benign obsolete wake versus interrupted active work). Presentation-only changes use the existing report refresh path and make no provider calls; do not claim replay can prove changed runtime behavior.
  6. Select a bounded live confirmation. Write the exact failed representative IDs and only the passing controls affected by the change. Pin the source, definitions, models, and remote image. Record an attempt cap, provider and compute budget, wall-clock deadline, and concurrency before dispatch under the existing live-run authorization. Missing pricing means unknown, not free. Do not rerun unaffected green cells during diagnosis or retry usable behavior failures until they happen to pass. Preserve every attempt. Expand to a compatible qualification campaign only after the causal fix passes.
  7. Close with evidence and remaining scope. Report original versus new measurements, exact selected coverage, regression results, cost coverage, and unresolved boundaries. A partial verification may close one defect; it cannot turn the full catalog green or establish reliability from one attempt.

Keep one triage record per cause with: affected cell IDs; evidence links; observed failure; supported cause and confidence; existing fix/revision; proposed product contract; invariant regressions; next exact live selection; budget and stop condition; owner; and disposition. Useful dispositions include confirmed product defect, model behavior, grader correction, infrastructure repair, fixed-but-not-remeasured, historical pass, and unqualified coverage.

Parallelize independent artifact inventory, deterministic checks, and isolated cells. Keep a cell's dependent turns ordered. When delegating, use inexpensive agents for bounded extraction, catalog reconciliation, and test execution; keep causal attribution, product design, and final review with the lead. Begin local browser campaigns at the documented conservative concurrency and increase only with measured host headroom. Hosted fanout must respect the workflow's provider and fleet caps; more simultaneous timeouts do not improve wall-clock efficiency.

Current tools support exact-ID selection and retained-evidence report refresh, but not an automatic cause-aware "rerun unresolved failures" planner. Build an explicit selection manifest rather than treating --all as that planner. Review the launcher's automatic retry policy when budgeting; Product E2E may create one fresh attempt for a retryable failure.

Install the authoring skills

The reviewable sources live in this repository's .agents/skills. For a multi-repository workspace, install the three skills at ~/paperclipai/.agents/skills (not ~/paperclipai/skills). From the Paperclip checkout, run:

for skill in paperclip-evals add-runner-eval add-product-e2e-eval; do
  install -d "$HOME/paperclipai/.agents/skills/$skill"
  install -m 644 ".agents/skills/$skill/SKILL.md" \
    "$HOME/paperclipai/.agents/skills/$skill/SKILL.md"
done

This replaces only the three named skill entrypoints. Run it again after updating their tracked sources. Each skill locates the repository independently of its installation directory.

Maintain the public hub

The hub is a static directory with two links to the existing history systems. It displays a dated snapshot, not a live scoreboard. It does not run models, create another result archive, or change the existing campaign URLs.

Build from the public history feeds and check its summary logic:

python3 -m unittest discover -s scripts/evals-hub -p 'test_*.py'
python3 scripts/evals-hub/build.py --output .paperclip/evals-hub

The hub checks need Python 3 and do not call model providers.

For offline checks, pass --history-dir <directory> containing runner-protocol-evals-history.json and runner-e2e-history.json. For a pre-merge preview, pass --docs-ref <branch-or-sha> to link the guide at that revision. The default guide link uses master.

Publish with the Paperclip page helper and the configured page-uploader credentials. Use Bash 4 or newer; macOS's system Bash 3 cannot run this helper. On macOS with Homebrew Bash installed, put $(brew --prefix bash)/bin first in PATH before these commands:

export PAPERCLIP_PAGE_BUCKET=pages.paperclip.ing
export PAPERCLIP_PAGE_BASE_URL=https://pages.paperclip.ing
export AWS_REGION=us-east-1
bash .agents/skills/paperclip-page/scripts/publish.sh .paperclip/evals-hub --slug evals --dry-run
bash .agents/skills/paperclip-page/scripts/publish.sh .paperclip/evals-hub --slug evals

For later refreshes, rebuild in the same output directory and publish with --update. Keep its ignored .paperclip-page/state.json ownership record; without that record, the helper will refuse to overwrite an existing prefix. Verify the public page and its links after publication. This manual refresh does not add a scheduled workflow. Preserve the measurement date when choosing a newer rendering of the same campaign.

Remaining native chat boundaries are in the explicit-only agent-chat-qualification suite: active task reassignment, user Retry after verified worker process loss, and multi-turn answers grounded in actual task records. See the workflow and qualification limits. The 26 native first-task cells inspect the production wizard's saved native default on qualified targets, without an API runner switch. The 26 Legacy cells select Legacy explicitly in Advanced. Live results and semantic answer reviews must accompany any qualification claim; catalog presence alone is not a pass.

The explicit-only native question/resume qualification separates a completed two-answer user journey from semantic-tool documentation qualification. It verifies the exact provider-pause or native response-wake binding for each answer and preserves prior grades when the definition changes.

Lifecycle behavior baseline

The credential-free lifecycle baseline joins unit, scripted-runner, and database integration assertions to a scenario inventory before changing narrative-based lifecycle policy. Run pnpm test:lifecycle-baseline to retain current passes and failures. Its Product E2E matcher calibration is separate from live execution; unrun live coverage remains explicitly unmeasured.

The separate live lifecycle baseline defines 46 real-provider Product E2E cells, including paired narrative probes and named existing controls on legacy and native Codex. Discover it with pnpm test:e2e:runner -- --list --suite lifecycle-baseline. Historical execution results and follow-up coverage are recorded in that suite's guide.

Continuation accounting has an explicit-only eight-cell Product E2E baseline suite, complementing the deterministic lifecycle inventory.

The explicit Product E2E instruction-persistence suite verifies private file edits, nested and binary agent files, stopped-provider directory saves, server restart, and a fresh task's downloaded proof on local native/legacy Codex and native Daytona. See the Product E2E runbook.

The explicit-only Product E2E api-response-reading suite verifies retrieval of large saved API responses on local and Daytona native Codex runs. See the Runner E2E guide.

The explicit-only Product E2E extended-harnesses suite covers pending Cursor, Copilot and Pi ACP profiles on local and Daytona. See the fixture admission, credentials and budget contract. The private Runner Evals campaign of the same name provides complementary semantic protocol cases; catalog membership is not live qualification.

The explicit local Copilot protection fixtures exercise native permission denial with operator cancellation and bounded attached command settlement. Their registration remains separate from paid qualification; source/pack provenance and complete persisted evidence are required. The explicit-only Product E2E confirmation-replies suite tests conversational approval and rejection, persisted message provenance, approval before execution, ambiguous proposals, and the existing card-click path with native Claude/Codex. See the suite contract.

Hiring notification accounting now also requires exact completed action attribution. Missing native/provider ID mapping is uncomparable evidence; it must not be reported as a model task regression or waived through name/order matching. The fixture waits for both known completion callbacks and settled bracketed observations, including the gap before pending outbox work becomes a wake. Strict action replay and original machine verdicts are retained separately.

The explicit-only planning guidance utility comparison measures task decomposition and handoffs with current, short, and disabled skills.

The explicit-only task-workspaces Product E2E suite covers projectless task files, deferred repository acquisition, controller restart and nested Git/dirty-file persistence on legacy local, native local and native Daytona OpenCode. Its three configured cells use independent filesystem, public API and download oracles; no live qualification is implied by fixture registration.

The explicit-only feedback persistence case checks real native complaint/suggestion submissions and retained bodies with run-attributed tool receipts on local and Daytona execution. Its four native Claude/Codex cells are explicit-only. Remote registrations remain unqualified until retained live attempts prove them. It uses the normal Product E2E report and keeps synthetic feedback distinct from actionable product findings.

Legacy workspace preservation

The explicit legacy workspace migration Product E2E suites verify a retained session through the production offline migration and an empty replacement controller. They complement the rolling deployment suites and do not claim uninterrupted service during initial enrollment.