PaperClipAI/doc/connections/README.md

# Apps, Connections, and Integrations

Audience: internal engineers and product contributors working on integrations.

Start here when adding a provider:
[Connection authoring runbook](./CONNECTOR-PLAYBOOK.md). 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.

Provider notes: [Google Workspace](./GOOGLE-WORKSPACE.md),
[Gmail](./GMAIL.md), [PostHog](./POSTHOG.md). Optional credential custody:
[Vercel Connect](./VERCEL-CONNECT.md).

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](/PAP/issues/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_secrets` as secret refs. A reviewed remote MCP method may instead
  opt in to [Vercel Connect](./VERCEL-CONNECT.md), 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:

1. A stored credential reference.
2. A capability catalog.
3. A governance layer.
4. 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](./FIRST-30-MATRIX.md),
the [connection authoring runbook](./CONNECTOR-PLAYBOOK.md), 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](./GLOSSARY.md) defines product and internal terms.
- [Identity vs. connections](#identity-vs-connections) is the public statement
  of the P1/P2/P3 boundary and the D7 standing rule for connections work.
- [Security threat model](./SECURITY-THREAT-MODEL.md) harvests the keeper from
  [PAP-2359](/PAP/issues/PAP-2359) and maps it onto Apps v2.
- [First-30 matrix](./FIRST-30-MATRIX.md) harvests the keeper from
  [PAP-2432](/PAP/issues/PAP-2432) and is the source matrix for connector
  playbook work.
- [Connecting any remote MCP server](./GENERIC-REMOTE-MCP.md) 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](./CONNECTOR-PLAYBOOK.md) 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](./VERCEL-CONNECT.md) documents the optional
  external credential source, deployment flags, runtime resolution, recovery,
  and smoke requirements.
- [MCP access governance](../MCP-ACCESS-GOVERNANCE.md) 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.