PaperClipAI/doc/skill-ephemeral-web-servers.md

Skills on ephemeral web servers

The skills guarantee is replacement of A by B, and then C, with empty web-server homes and the same database, object storage, secrets and supported application artifacts. Disk remains useful for scratch archives, verified caches and transport staging. It does not own acknowledged managed edits or installed version selection. This guarantee does not qualify instructions, workspaces, controller state, run logs, traffic switching or readiness/draining for volume removal.

Ownership and publication

managed is Paperclip ownership. Its locator is null; editability does not depend on a directory's position beneath a managed root. Existing policies normalize it to workspace, the policy category previously used by managed local skills. Repository provenance and tracking remain separate from installed content. Forks and disconnected editable copies retain source access and cannot publish restricted content through a public source category.

managed-skill-content.ts reads immutable version inventories, prepares candidates, and publishes them against a captured head. Package upload and verification happen before the final database transaction. That transaction rechecks identity/access, locks names in sorted order, locks the skill, verifies the base, and publishes the version, head, projections and applicable mutation audit/receipt. Publication races return 409; clients must reconcile instead of automatically rebasing. Complete inline versions remain the compatibility fallback when external writes are disabled; they never depend on an installed directory. Normal cloud qualification uses remote object storage.

The initial create response, including its original version, can be replayed after a lost response and subsequent edits. Its durable API receipt retains the response projection without Markdown; the immutable version supplies the body. Receipts remain scoped to company, actor and operation context. A deleted skill's receipt fails explicitly rather than creating another identity.

skill-execution-content.ts owns temporary materialization. Heartbeat preparation selects authorized immutable versions, saves the selection (including an empty selection), and only then materializes admitted entries while retaining the existing retention lock. A renamed skill is recovered through the version's stable skill ID. Native recovery resolves the version, reconstructs its v1 projection and requires the admitted digest, manifest digest, file count and byte count to match. Adjacent compatible releases must preserve that projection contract.

Studio tests deliver the selected saved version through the same native Runner path, even without a permanent agent assignment. Their skill_test mode remains explicit in the execution input. The durable test row replaces ordinary agent assignments with its exact version, independently of the Beta skills preference; required environment skills remain subject to their existing policy. A shadowed or inaccessible test skill fails preparation. Preconfigured Runner homes cannot receive this managed delivery, so Studio requires an isolated home. Task-bound credentials and native authorization retain the admitted scope through restart and task-mode edits. Native tools expose only the harness task and admitted skills; company browsing, task creation, connectors and assigned MCP tools are unavailable. A rollback image must understand that mode to continue an active Studio test. Settle tests before rolling back to an earlier image that rejects it.

Native task completion publishes the Studio result and output snapshot in the same transaction as its status decision. Replaying a committed decision cannot recapture later document edits or duplicate completion activity. A successful provider turn alone does not complete a test whose task remains unfinished.

Bundled release snapshots remain immutable. Reconciliation preserves an installed head; an older process must never promote its shipped bytes over another installed version. The shipped release history remains independently selectable. Linked-local skills retain mutable source behavior and are explicitly excluded from cloud readiness.

One-time conversion

First deploy compatible readers and shared/API types. Preserve the old volume and keep legacy writers until the final supported contents can be captured. Automatic JSONB package migration is separate from installation conversion; passing one does not prove the other is finished.

Run the existing bounded CLI with the target's explicit database and storage config:

pnpm --filter @paperclipai/server exec tsx scripts/migrate-skill-packages.ts --phase=eligibility --company=<uuid> --limit=10
pnpm --filter @paperclipai/server exec tsx scripts/migrate-skill-packages.ts --phase=installations --company=<uuid> --limit=10

These commands return a cursor. Continue each phase with --after=<uuid> until an empty batch. Eligibility is a metadata-only report, not a storage verification claim. Installation preview inspects candidate legacy contents without publishing them. For remote legacy imports it can acquire their exact pinned source; it must never use the latest branch as a replacement for missing installed content.

1. Inventory all companies and source kinds. Identify missing versions, incomplete inventory, local storage receipts, catalog reset snapshots and unresolved runs.

2. Backfill legacy package/version bodies with the existing snapshots and versions phases. The latter also fills missing version metadata indexes so subsequent library/history reads need no object downloads. Keep original bytes until independent verification succeeds.

3. Stop admission and skill/source writers; retire every filesystem-authoritative process. The --writers-stopped flag attests this operator action; it does not stop the application itself.

4. Apply final installation conversion on the host with the legacy files:

   pnpm --filter @paperclipai/server exec tsx scripts/migrate-skill-packages.ts --phase=installations --company=<uuid> --limit=10 --apply --writers-stopped
   

5. Sweep eligibility and verification, including all historical versions. The latter verifies object bytes independently of caches. Follow all cursors; a successful first batch is not a complete readiness report.

6. Start a compatible server with a fresh home and test list, file read, authoring, history and exact selected execution before reopening normal admission.

Managed conversion preserves skill IDs, keys, history, assignments, pins and access provenance. Identical complete snapshots reuse their version IDs. Catalog conversion preserves the original reset version as well as installed content. A missing legacy directory can use a complete verified saved version. A partial Markdown-only rescue, unknown revision, unsafe source tree or active legacy selection without exact version identity is a blocker. Settle or snapshot such runs while A is still available; do not cancel them simply to pass preflight.

Report statuses distinguish linked-local sources, legacy managed/catalog records, missing current versions, unknown active-run selections, missing/corrupt packages, local storage and provider mismatch. Expired unused Git history keeps its existing 30-day/exact-commit policy. Current, pinned, authored and recovering versions need independent durable content. local_storage is supported self-hosted durability; it does not satisfy remote empty-disk recovery.

Storage and rollback

Cloud readiness requires external Postgres and remote object storage. Migrate and verify existing local-disk objects before changing provider/bucket configuration; changing configuration alone does not copy receipts or objects. Keep the old provider available until a provider migration has copied and independently verified every referenced object and atomically updated its storage receipt. This command does not perform provider migration: local_storage and provider_mismatch are blocking results for cloud qualification, not instructions to switch configuration and retry. A directory of extracted caches is never a durable object backend.

The maintenance CLI reads the existing storage configuration directly so it can verify legacy local-disk objects before cutover. On Cloud it still requires the persisted runtime configuration and never seeds or changes that configuration. This maintenance boundary does not start a server or relax Cloud server startup requirements for external PostgreSQL, shared object storage and a stable secret key. Apply operations retain their existing stopped-writer gates.

Conversion establishes the rollback floor. Afterward only compatible version-reading binaries may overlap or be rolled back against the same remote state. Reattaching an old volume does not roll back committed content. Filesystem-authoritative binaries require an explicit reverse migration and are unsupported rollback targets. A routine compatible A → B upgrade needs no skills conversion or filesystem copy.

A current version ID alone does not establish conversion completeness. Eligibility and independent verification compare its file inventory with the installed record and report incomplete_current_version when supporting files are missing. Installation conversion can reacquire a complete exact pinned source; unavailable or unpinned sources remain blockers. Historical versions are not compared with newer installed inventories, since later revisions may legitimately add files.

Qualification

The focused service suite covers publication rollback/conflict, supporting and binary files, executable modes, restore/fork/rename, active-run deletion protection and legacy conversion. The opt-in process suite starts independent Node servers with one database connection each, exercises real HTTP routes and object storage, removes predecessor homes and executes a delivered harmless script. It also injects a lost response, failed upload and process death during upload. It is a skills-router qualification, not a full hosted Runner or whole-application deployment claim.

Use owned disposable Postgres and S3-compatible fixtures. The optional admin URL creates a random database per test suite and never migrates the database named in that URL. The S3 test creates and removes its own random bucket. Supply test-only AWS credentials through the environment:

PAPERCLIP_TEST_POSTGRES_ADMIN_URL=<disposable-postgres-url> \
PAPERCLIP_TEST_S3_ENDPOINT=<disposable-s3-endpoint> \
pnpm exec vitest run server/src/__tests__/ephemeral-skills-process.test.ts

Record revision, fixture image digests, version IDs, cache/object reads, cold/warm timings and useful output. These local timings do not establish hosted latency. Separately qualify one disposable staging tenant and a real remote Runner, including an explicit repository import, historical pin, fresh-home replacements, compatible rollback and recovery without predecessor paths. Publish the observed evidence with the PR; a passing local suite is not that staging evidence.