## Thinking Path > - Paperclip is the open source app people use to manage AI agents for work. > - People open tasks from their personal workspace and send replies to agents. > - Cold task opens should load recent conversation before older history. > - Classic settings could expand history before the Coordinator preference arrived. > - Coordinator lists also read full tasks, and response startup used the previous assignee. > - This pull request restores compact reads and keeps the selected responder visible through runtime discovery. > - People can read and reply without waiting for unrelated history or losing response feedback. ## Linked Issues or Issue Description Related: #17593, #17751, #17756, #17885, #17983, and #18092. **What happened?** A cold task could select Classic full history while its personal workspace preference was pending. The full-history choice stayed cached after Coordinator became active. Coordinator Tasks used full task reads. Needs attention fetched one enriched task per pending task. Sending to a newly selected agent could show no responder, show the previous assignee, or clear feedback when assignment changed. Legacy runtime discovery then replaced the startup identity with a generic activity line. **Expected behavior** Wait for the workspace preference before selecting Classic history. Show the task instruction and recent conversation with **More messages** for older content. Read collection indexes and fetch diagnostics for visible rows. Keep the selected responder mounted from Send through saved input and runtime startup. **Steps to reproduce** 1. Enable Classic task UI and Coordinator. Delay the personal workspace preference on a cold task open. 2. Open Coordinator Tasks or its Needs attention view with many pending tasks. 3. Open a task assigned to a person. Select another agent in the composer and send a message. 4. Let the message save before runtime reads return. Then allow a legacy run to appear. ## What Changed - Wait for task interface settings before persisting Classic history expansion. - Use lightweight indexes for Coordinator Tasks. Resolve pending task IDs in batches of at most 100. Keep search and participant filters on the server. Enrich at most 50 visible rows through the existing hook without replacing list membership or order. - Preserve an error when a pending task cannot load, instead of showing a false all-clear. - Register board cards for row enrichment. Observe newly mounted cards after column expansion or pagination, and track visibility by element so hidden list rows cannot clear visible board cards with the same task ID. - Track the recipient of each submitted message through reassignment. A later draft's recipient does not change the response already starting. - Share a stable response header across startup, native runtime, and legacy runtime rendering. Keep the existing transcript renderers. - Add regression tests, production-browser checks, design guidance, and feature-map notes. ## Verification - Red/green: delayed Coordinator preference started a full comments read before the fix. It now retains compact history and still expands on request. - Red/green: sends from human or other-agent assignment showed no identity or the wrong identity. Both now retain the selected responder through assignment, acknowledgement, later draft selection, and native/legacy startup. - In a 105-task Needs attention fixture, the previous code made 105 enriched detail requests. The fixed code makes two bounded index requests. - All 659 final affected tests pass across task detail, thread, runner turn, history window, Inbox, board, row enrichment, and Coordinator collection suites. - Review follow-up: the production board lost its next-step badge before card registration. The regression now passes, along with column pagination. The focused 82-test enrichment run and 371-test header/thread run also pass. - All 12 compact-startup browser checks pass against the production UI and an isolated PostgreSQL container. They cover delayed preferences, list navigation, saved-card geometry, document/comment anchors, history expansion, draft retention, retry, and actual legacy process startup. The final deterministic process case recorded 118 frames with zero missing or replaced responder identities. It does not call a model provider. - Full workspace build and typecheck pass. Final UI build and typecheck pass after the shared-header change. Token gates, map checks, module boundaries, and diff checks pass. - The full UI rerun before the board review follow-up passed all 10,034 tests across 844 files. The 659 affected tests pass after that follow-up. The first full UI run passed 10,030 tests and timed out in one unchanged IssuesList large-tree test. Its two variants pass in an isolated rerun and in the full rerun. Those later passes establish recovery; the earlier timeout's cause remains unproven. - The full `pnpm test:run` attempt was stopped after repeated embedded PostgreSQL initialization failures in server fixtures. No complete local server-suite pass is claimed. Browser verification recovered with a disposable container database. - A later avatar browser rerun reused the previous same-title task and its cancelled run through the existing 48-hour title deduplication. That fixture never reached fresh runtime startup. The test now uses a unique title and checks its initial assignment/status; a full 12-case rerun and a second avatar run on the same instance pass. The failed trace is retained locally. - Final commit `7a18372da3` has 55 successful checks, two intentionally skipped Storybook checks, and one neutral Paperclip Review. All required verification gates are green. Greptile is 5/5 with no actionable findings or open review threads. The advisory Paperclip review paused without a complete assessment; no passing Paperclip assessment is claimed. - These checks establish bounded reads and stable rendering. No reliable staging latency benchmark or staging deployment is claimed. ## Risks - Collection projections omit task bodies. Detail navigation must retain its normal core/full task reads. Search remains server-side. - Startup feedback must end on rejection, unavailable agents, terminal outcomes, or a visible run. Existing cases cover those transitions. - The shared header changes the legacy live-turn layout to retain identity beside its existing status line. - No migration, mutation permission, provider protocol, or execution authority change. ## Model Used OpenAI Codex, GPT-6 family. The exact serving deployment ID and context-window size are not exposed in this session. The model used reasoning, code editing, shell tools, automated Chromium checks, and manual browser inspection. ## 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 (focused suites and browser checks; full-suite limitations are recorded above) - [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>
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Task creation and lifecycle
People create, assign, organize, discuss, and finish tasks. A task retains its owner, project, priority, history, and outputs as it moves through the work lifecycle.
Feature ID: tasks.
Implementation: new task, task list, task detail.
Agent access: companion.
Sub-features
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create:tasks/create— capture a title/request with the intended agent, project, and attachments. -
organize:tasks/organize— filter, sort, group, and navigate tasks without losing the selected context. -
properties:tasks/properties— change status, priority, assignee, project, and relationships where authorized. -
discussion:tasks/discussion— persist comments, references, and files on the task. -
completion:tasks/completion— distinguish backlog, active work, review, blocked, done, and cancelled outcomes. -
privacy:tasks/privacy— create private tasks, share or revoke access, and inspect parent/project inheritance before changing visibility.
The Product task-properties journey checks only assignment to the signed-in user and persistence after reload. Its source is reusable across self-hosted and Cloud; Cloud live qualification is separate. It does not cover other property operations or agent authorization.
How to get to it (user POV)
Cold collection loads use a lightweight index and batched hierarchy context,
then fetch diagnostic details for visible rows. Delay the index, hierarchy, and
visible-row details independently when verifying tasks/organize: row heights,
title bounds, and the first-row origin should remain stable. Test nested expansion,
scrolling to more rows, and detail/back navigation; a collection projection must
never suppress the full task instruction fetch.
Coordinator Tasks uses the same index and visible-row enrichment. Needs attention
resolves pending task IDs in batches of at most 100; it does not fetch enriched
task detail for every decision. Search and participant filters stay on the server.
Cold Coordinator detail must stay compact when Classic settings arrive before
the personal workspace preference. Verify explicit history expansion afterward.
new-task
Use New task from the global launcher, task list, or project task view.
task-list
Open /issues or a project’s Issues view; legacy /tasks links redirect.
task-detail
Open /issues/:issueId from a row, mention, or direct link. Cold opens show the instruction, recent exchange and saved cards together. No URL fragment expands history; older-comment anchors fetch only their target, and document anchors open the pane. More messages appears only when earlier comments or runs are omitted and loads that history. Fresh tasks with no omitted history have no disclosure. A single legacy run with a truncated log offers More run output instead. More task actions → Show task activity loads full activity even for a single native run; incoming messages remain visible while the task stays open.
task-sharing
Use the privacy control in New task, or open an existing task’s menu and choose Make private, Share…, or Make public where allowed. The share sheet lists direct grants and inherited access from private ancestors or project membership. Inherited rows have no local revoke action; manage that access at its source.
Driving it with Playwright and the Paperclip CLI
Preconditions: follow the baseline. Use a disposable project. Persistence checks can assign work to Me or leave it unassigned; execution checks additionally need an invokable test agent. Record whether a real or simulated harness handles execution.
Operation checkpoints
Use these checks alongside the entry-point recipes below and the operation records in the access companion. Record the actual actor, surface, saved result and denial separately. Source review and linked tests do not establish a live pass.
| Capability ID | Action and persisted result | Denial, race and retry checks |
|---|---|---|
tasks/create |
Create an unassigned task or assign it to Me; save its description and context, then reopen and reload the exact task. | Exercise required fields, inaccessible parents/projects, and the same API creation key with identical and changed input. Compare task IDs and run counts; saving a draft is not creation. |
tasks/organize |
Find the saved task through list, project, filter, and direct-link surfaces; change supported labels separately. | Compare another actor’s private results and another company. Distinguish browser sorting/grouping preferences from saved task data. |
tasks/properties |
Change title, metadata, assignee, dependencies, work mode, execution settings, and monitor/watchdog configuration as separate operations. Reload each saved change. | Use an occupied checkout, stale status version, invalid dependency, stopped run, and disallowed mode. Check the specific rejection and unchanged fields; a successful title edit does not establish assignment authority. |
tasks/discussion |
Post a unique comment, reload, and inspect attribution. Read history, inspect a queued message, and delete only an owned disposable comment where allowed. | Separate an ordinary comment from steering or a wake. Check inaccessible task history, author-only deletion, queued cancellation, and duplicate delivery. Feedback votes have their own human authority. |
tasks/completion |
Complete, block, request review, reopen, and cancel separate disposable tasks through offered controls. Inspect the saved outcome, review gates, and execution state. | Test pending dependencies/reviews, a stale or active checkout, and late writes after handoff. Terminal status does not prove provider stop or saved files. Verify checkout/release and destructive deletion separately from completion. |
tasks/privacy |
Create private work with a responsible person; share a child, inspect direct/inherited rows, revoke a direct grant, and check publication constraints. | Use separate ordinary people and an actual agent. Shared readers cannot manage grants; ancestor/project access changes at its source. Reload and retry discovery/direct reads after revocation; keep unrelated direct grants. |
new-task
Automated: board dialogs checks that the task form appears on the first synchronous open and retains its draft across reopen. Creation dialog covers typing while agent/project requests are pending and retaining that text when defaults arrive. These are component checks with mocked requests.
Manual: Create a uniquely named task with an agent and project. Open its resulting link and reload. Confirm text, attachment, assignment, and project persisted, and verify execution started only when the task and agent are eligible.
On the first New task open after a page load, confirm the form appears without a loading dialog. Delay agent and project responses, type a request, then release the responses. Confirm the choices populate without replacing the form or its text.
Creation is request-first: enter Describe a task…, choose the assignee and project, and submit Create task. A standalone title field is not always shown. Use a human/unassigned task to verify persistence without invoking a model.
task-list
Automated: task-list helpers cover search URLs, pagination, deduplication, and presentation constants. The suite does not render the page or exercise filtering, grouping, opening a task, and returning; those interactions still need a running-browser check.
Task and inbox rows omit the system interruption labels Thinking, Trying again soon, and Retry available. Shared row tests cover working, scheduled-retry, and failed interruptions in both row presentations, including suppression of replacement recovery chips. Task status and other relevant badges remain visible; retry controls remain inside the task conversation.
Manual: Seed human-created, agent-created, scheduled routine, human-initiated chat-channel, and creator-less tasks. Confirm automation is hidden by default, show agent-created tasks reveals it, reload preserves the choice, and Clear filters hides it again. Verify list and board search with automation newer than the human results, and expand contextual ancestors/subtasks without promoting unrelated automated roots. Repeat in project task lists. Agent profiles and task-detail subtasks retain complete history.
Manual: Filter by status and assignee, change grouping/sort, open a task, and return. Verify the correct records and selected view survive navigation and reload. Include an empty result and a failed request.
task-detail
Manual: Open a long task with slow historical requests. Read the instruction and recent reply before those requests finish. Edit the title/status while enrichment is pending and verify saves and rollbacks. Expand More messages, verify scroll position and no duplicate replies, return to the task, and follow an older comment link. Leave a task open across new messages and runs and confirm none disappear. Reconnect after several turns and verify watched runs settle. Reopen after steering with more than 50 newer activity rows; the delivered message must not reappear in the queue.
Automated: cold-open reads cover bounded reads, event filtering and company denial. Task detail covers component behavior, while issue service covers server contracts.
Failure markers have no dashed divider rules. An adjacent run error and no-live-execution-path notice show only the last error, with its details and retry action, including a permitted legacy run retry carried onto a later recovery notice. Intervening messages, unrelated system notices that quote error text, and credential-access denials stay visible. Explicit non-recovery titles stop grouping. Saved stranded-recovery action metadata plus a known recovery statement also identify recovery notices with a default or source-run title. Only known recovery statements use the legacy text fallback. Grouping tests and marker tests cover the presentation. The Failure notices stories mount the production thread view with fixture data. The focused browser suite checks play assertions, disclosure, retry callbacks, themes and phone width. These checks do not dispatch a real retry or change stored run history.
Automated: paused assignee relevance uses a real disposable server and paused process agent, with no inference, to check both task interfaces. Done and cancelled tasks hide the paused-agent warning; reopening restores it. The agent stays paused and no run starts.
Manual: For a disposable task owned by a legacy agent, have its current run
assign the task to a human with status In review. Verify that assignment and
status persist, that the current run finishes without issue_reassigned, and
that slow workspace restoration does not turn the task Blocked. Try a later edit
from the outgoing run and verify rejection. Repeat a board
reassignment and confirm that the outgoing run still stops.
Manual: Add a comment and edit authorized properties. Reload and verify history, actor, and values. Complete a disposable task and inspect its deliverable; reopen through an available action and confirm the next execution follows current policy.
Manual: Ask a standard native agent to schedule a future check on its current task. Reload and confirm the persisted monitor. After the agent yields, verify one later wake and a consumed schedule. For malformed-call recovery, use the agent access recipe and verify that schema feedback supports a corrected call before a wait is claimed. For a due monitor held by execution recovery, confirm that the schedule remains and task activity explains the deferral. Repeated checks must not replay the held work. Resolve the hold through its existing recovery action, then verify one wake. On a blocked task with a retained monitor, verify that automatic checks show as paused. Check now requests one check through normal admission without changing the task status. Confirm that an unresolved dependency or recovery hold prevents dispatch and does not produce a success message. Backlog and todo tasks must not offer Check now. Blocked provider-quota recovery must offer no manual check and retain its schedule until the task resumes. Agents and automatic ticks cannot check a blocked task. Hold native finalization after the provider has stopped, and verify that both scheduled and manual checks retain the due monitor. After settlement, verify one wake. If its timeout passes during workspace recovery, verify settlement followed by the configured expiry recovery, with no ordinary monitor wake or duplicate escalation. For a timer already dispatched before recovery, verify that the saved result settles without changing the task, removing a successor's checkout, or creating another wake. The monitor regression and scheduler regression cover these boundaries with PostgreSQL.
Manual: Add an ordinary Board comment while a task retry is queued or running. Confirm that the same execution keeps working and receives the saved message, without a second executor or an implicit move to Todo. Repeat with a parked retry and verify that fresh instructions can supersede it. Explicit Stop must still cancel active work. The comment route regressions and HTTP/process and interrupted-cancellation tests cover these boundaries locally; deployed runner acceptance remains separate.
task-sharing
Automated: Share sheet, privacy controls, grant routes, and privacy production review cover component actions, persisted grants, inheritance, and actor/resource denials. They do not establish a live two-person browser journey.
Manual: Use authenticated mode with two ordinary operators, an eligible agent, and disposable parent/child/sibling tasks. Create private work as the first person; confirm the second person cannot discover or cold-open it. Share only the child, reload both sessions, and verify child/descendant access without exposing the private parent, sibling, or unreadable project metadata. Inspect direct and inherited rows in Share; inherited rows must identify access managed at its source and offer no local revoke action. Confirm a shared reader cannot manage the task’s grants. Revoke the direct grant as its manager, reload, and retry list and direct reads; change inherited access at its ancestor or project source separately. Inspect blocked Make public actions under a private parent or nonpersonal private project; separately confirm the offered personal-project publish action removes that project binding while private descendants remain private. With an actual granted agent, test the responsible user’s access intersection and the allowed restriction to private; agent access must not permit sharing or publishing.
Sources: Privacy actions, share sheet, issue routes, and authorization.
Gotchas
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Private task sharing and private project membership are distinct read sources. Revoking a direct task grant does not revoke an independent ancestor/project grant; inspect the actual access source.
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Priority remains an API field, but ordinary priority UI editing is hidden.
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A status label alone does not prove that the requested work exists.
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Single-assignee and atomic checkout rules still apply when tasks are created from different hosts.
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Use coordination, steering, and documents for their distinct workflows.
Documentation scope: Tasks, conversations, and attention
Recipes cover the main task/conversation/attention workflows. Full shell, permission, attachment, long-thread, and concurrency permutations remain to be enumerated.