DottaandPaperclip
ff80845756
## Thinking Path > - Paperclip is the open source app people use to manage AI agents for work. > - Slack setup connects a saved agent draft to a workspace. > - Workspace authorization can fail before the agent's Slack app exists. > - The error requested reconnection while its primary action said Continue. > - Older grants could also make retry provision instead of reopening authorization. > - This change names the recovery action and keeps it on the authorization path. > - People can reconnect from the same setup page and resume the saved agent. ## Linked Issues or Issue Description Refs: #18722. **What happened?** A managed Slack draft showed “Reconnect your Slack workspace to continue setting up this agent.” Its primary action was Continue. The reconnect label depended on a registration that might not exist, and a saved error or failed explicit authorization could be ignored when an older grant remained available. **Expected behavior:** Offer one enabled Reconnect Slack workspace action that opens ordinary Slack authorization and resumes the saved setup. **Steps to reproduce:** Resume a managed Slack draft before app creation with a saved manager reauthorization error, or fail an explicit workspace authorization request. Inspect the recovery action with zero, one or multiple older workspace grants. ## What Changed - Show Reconnect Slack workspace for saved and local authorization failures before app creation and for existing-app recovery. - Honor the saved manager error and retain explicit authorization intent, so retry authorizes rather than provisioning with an older grant. - Hide irrelevant workspace controls during recovery and allow authorization before choosing an old grant. Use one recovery action. - Cover zero, one and two older grants in component regressions. Update the existing browser test to use the explicit action; add production-wizard desktop/mobile recovery previews and provider guidance. The Slack provider UI owns this change. It uses the existing authorization endpoint and shared footer; API contracts and provider permissions are unchanged. Maps are unchanged. ## Verification - Final head: `02234bd1afc61d404841a9fc2b7e457b0dc021bf`. Full CI [41715544834](https://github.com/paperclipai/paperclip/actions/runs/41715544834) passed on attempt 2, including all browser, server/chat, Runner, typecheck, build, policy and canary checks. Greptile and Ponytail both give this exact head 5/5; all review threads are resolved. - All 20 managed setup tests and 276 related chat UI tests across 19 files passed. All 9 Slack provider browser cases passed on the final source in 1.3 minutes using Node 24.22.2 and unchanged Playwright configuration. Provider responses are mocked in those cases. - Full repository typecheck and build passed earlier; final UI typecheck/build, token gates and Storybook catalog checks passed after the source refinement. All 30 map/catalog Node checks passed. Catalog/map checks are structural. The full local server Vitest suite was not repeated for this UI-only change; full CI covered it. - Production-wizard browser previews covered saved recovery on desktop and at 320 × 568, older grants, and failed explicit authorization. On the final source, the visible retry with older grants returned to an error-free workspace chooser, where Continue requires a choice. Selecting a workspace and continuing was also exercised through the message step during the preceding refinement. All provider actions in these previews are simulated. - The existing recovery path was independently exercised live in staging through ordinary controls: Continue → Slack Allow → Success → Open Slack → real agent DM reply → Done → full reload. The new action label still needs deployed acceptance. No live grant was revoked or duplicate bot created to force the error. Failures retained through acceptance: - New regressions failed on the earlier sources for missing recovery labels, ignored saved errors with active grants, a duplicate action, disabled multi-workspace recovery, and lost explicit authorization intent. The final tests require enabled recovery, authorization navigation and no provisioning on that action. - The first preview assertion raced workspace-options loading; it now waits for the same enabled condition. A later multi-workspace return assertion incorrectly expected the message step; it now checks the required workspace choice and disabled Continue before selection. The fixture's authorization flag is reset by a normal full reload. An unsupported Testing Library `exact` option was caught by typecheck and replaced with an anchored name regex. Failure screenshots remain preserved. - Earlier CI [41707550300](https://github.com/paperclipai/paperclip/actions/runs/41707550300) found the existing browser test still clicking Continue and an npm canary-version collision. The locator was updated without removing authorization-count/redirect assertions; subsequent packaging checks passed. CI [41709833527](https://github.com/paperclipai/paperclip/actions/runs/41709833527) had runner shutdown/lost-communication interruptions; those earlier successes were not used to qualify the final head. - Final-head attempt 1 had a native Runner shutdown while unpacking its cache, plus a distinct Cursor Cloud Stop assertion failure in the package lane (4890 passed, 10 skipped). The Cursor Cloud case passed unchanged in isolation, with its source subtree matching the CI merge tree; the CI cause is not established. Both full Runner lanes then passed on retry of the same reviewed commit, with successful checks retained. - One local browser invocation timed out during server startup on Node 26 before assertions. The first Node 24 wrapper invocation failed a nested-npx package selector before assertions. Direct Playwright execution with that wrapper variable cleared and unchanged timeouts passed the final 9-case suite. - Greptile flagged a routine regression paragraph outside feature-map scope; it was removed. Ponytail then found the active-grant mismatch; it was reproduced and fixed at the authorization decision. Both reviewers now report 5/5. ## Risks Saved reauthorization errors and retries of explicit authorization requests now reopen existing Slack consent even when older grants remain. Provider availability or browser consent can still prevent reconnection. This change does not establish why the original workspace grant became unusable; simulated previews are not live Slack proof. ## Model Used OpenAI Codex, GPT-6 family, with reasoning, repository editing, browser use and command execution. The runtime does not expose a more precise model ID or context-window size. ## 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.
Chat and email channels: conversation-channel contract, question inventory and quality bar, and per-provider question coverage index.
Runtime authentication: AI Connections.
Long-term memory: Experimental memory connectors.
Provider notes: Google Workspace, Gmail, Asana, Sentry, PostHog, Braintrust, Neon, Superagent, Gauge, Ditto, 1Password, Unikraft, AgentMail, Telem.AI, iMessage Photon, Enterpret, Supabase, and Vercel. 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.