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## Thinking Path > - Paperclip manages agent work and shows users what can move it forward. > - Task status and tool approval cards describe different parts of that work. > - A queued dependency wait has no provider attempt to retry. > - GitHub can reject an approved action while other connection tools still work. > - These cases showed a false Retry banner and an unhelpful provider error. > - This pull request keeps dependency waits neutral and gives GitHub access failures a direct repair path. ## Linked Issues or Issue Description Related: #19268 preserves pending Retry preparation and current failure causes. **What happened?** A queued wake cancelled by the dependency gate appeared as a failed attempt with Retry. A GitHub MCP permission denial appeared as raw HTTP error text after an approved repository action. **Expected behavior** Keep the task's dependency state. Show GitHub access failures with a clear explanation and a link to the selected connection's Permissions page. Preserve actual failures, provider details, and approval gates. **Steps to reproduce** 1. Queue a wake, then leave its task dependent on unfinished work before dispatch. 2. Open the task after the dependency gate cancels that wake. 3. Separately approve a GitHub action whose MCP result contains `403 Resource not accessible by integration`. 4. Reopen the saved tool approval. ## What Changed - Recognize both queues' unstarted dependency-wait receipts in cancellation provenance and task projections. No dispatch or recovery gate changes. - Classify GitHub's specific permission error after MCP result normalization. Keep result validation, the raw diagnostic, and working tools available. - Apply the same display code to both historical GitHub error codes. Identify the provider from company-scoped connection metadata, including renamed apps, without rewriting stored decisions. - Show a token-based inline access card with **Manage GitHub access** and collapsed **Error details**. - Give agents trusted recovery steps after an approved GitHub action fails. Keep provider text in the untrusted result and prevent automatic replay. - Add regressions, a production-component Storybook case, and execution/connector documentation. ## Verification - Red before the fix: cancellation provenance, dependency-wait projection, the real queue cancellation, approved MCP failure classification, saved interaction projection, and the error card assertions failed at the expected behavior. - Green focused tests: queue cancellation, one ready-task executor, approval-before-dispatch, one failed GitHub request, connection reuse, retained provider diagnostics, saved interaction reads, task list/detail projection and redaction. - UI: 106 component tests passed. Token gates and Storybook catalog checks passed. - `node scripts/typecheck-low-memory.mjs`: passed. - Local source instance: verified a saved dependency wait stays neutral after reload; a saved GitHub error shows repair guidance, expands its original error, and opens the correct connection Permissions page. PostgreSQL and HTTP APIs were real. The GitHub denial was a controlled MCP fixture; no account or provider permission changed. - `pnpm build`: passed for all workspace packages, the Runner binary, server, CLI and UI. The server build and all server typecheck layers also passed after the review repair. - Additional safety checks passed for realistic repository arguments, active recovery, failed Retry preparation, and bounded provider diagnostics. - Review repair: 45 pure tests and 7 PostgreSQL cases passed. These cover both historical error codes, renamed apps, and company/provider/application identity boundaries. A second local browser check verified the renamed app, retained error detail, and correct Permissions destination. - Final review regressions: the dispatcher and metadata cases failed before the repair. Afterward, 25 focused cases and 59 projection/identity cases passed, including connection-key precedence. The native wait and app-only GitHub source also passed a local browser check. - The historical read adds at most one connection query per interaction read batch. It selects IDs and the provider key only and runs only for candidate permission failures. It adds no provider requests. - Full local `pnpm test:run` stopped at the chat suite's `afterAll` cleanup timeout. All 268 assertions in that group and the three prior chat groups passed. The failure is retained here; it is not counted as a full-suite pass. CI passed on `e8a692e1e2` after one workspace-startup rerun. Fresh CI is pending for the combined head. Its first workspace-a attempt timed out in the CLI company import/export test's child-server startup wait; 4,968 UI tests and 287 CLI tests passed in that job. The same shard passed on the preceding commit. The workspace shard passed on its one rerun. All other test, build and browser jobs passed. The [first failure](https://github.com/paperclipai/paperclip/actions/runs/42093823928/job/127478869941) is retained in the Actions history. Greptile reviewed the preceding head at 5/5. Fresh review is pending for the combined head. ## Risks The GitHub classifier matches the documented permission-denial phrase, not every 403. Rate limits, missing resources and other providers retain their existing error behavior. Historical normalization affects display only. A dependency cancellation needs an unstarted run and a supported queue receipt; current user gates, Retry preparation and recovery remain authoritative. No schema migration or credential changes. ## Model Used OpenAI GPT-6, through the Codex agent. The exact runtime model ID and context-window size are not exposed in this session. Used reasoning, repository tools, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, MCP fixtures and browser verification. The parallel agent-recovery commit records Anthropic Claude Opus 5.5 as co-author. ## 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 described the issue in-PR using the bug template - [x] I have not referenced internal or instance-local Paperclip issues or links - [x] My branch name describes the change - [x] I have run the focused tests locally and they pass - [x] I have added or updated tests where applicable - [x] I have updated relevant documentation - [x] I have considered and documented risks - [ ] All Paperclip CI gates are green - [ ] Greptile is 5/5 with no open findings - [x] I will address reviewer comments before requesting merge --------- Co-authored-by: Paperclip <noreply@paperclip.ing> Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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.