DottaandPaperclip
b43073d11f
## Thinking Path > - Paperclip is the open source app people use to manage AI agents for work. > - Connections give agents governed access to external tools. > - Aggregator gateways can expose accounts that users already connected upstream. > - The Apps catalog did not show those accounts or their current provider status. > - Separate cards and setup tasks also made account ownership unclear. > - This pull request discovers upstream accounts and groups them under one app card. > - Users can find connected apps while each provider keeps control of its accounts. ## Linked Issues or Issue Description **Subsystem affected** Connections across the database, shared contracts, server, and board UI. **Problem or motivation** Users cannot see which apps are connected through a saved aggregator gateway. Native and upstream accounts need one app card. Discovery must preserve company, user, gateway, and credential boundaries. **Proposed solution** Sync account metadata from Composio, Arcade, and supported Executor gateways. Keep upstream account management in each provider. Use source chips and search to browse the catalog. Preserve native setup and the gateway's existing access policy. **Alternatives considered** Creating a local executable connection for each upstream account would duplicate authorization state. Using an agent task for routine Composio setup would add an unnecessary step. The board now calls the saved gateway directly for that setup. **Roadmap alignment** This extends the shipped Connected Apps and MCP Tool Gateway features in ROADMAP.md. The duplicate search found no open PR for managed account discovery. Related work: Refs #13755, Refs #13941, Refs #14725, Refs #13855. Open PR #12906 covers adjacent toolkit routing work. ## What Changed - Add provider-neutral discovery, sync, and refresh APIs. Preserve the Composio API paths. - Cache observations by company, saved gateway, viewing user, and credential version. Retain stale observations after failed or incomplete scans. - Add optional Arcade account sync credentials in the vault. Discover Executor accounts through its supported inventory interface. - Group native and upstream accounts in one app card. Imported account menus open their provider. Gateway menus own refresh and sync setup. - Add Paperclip, Composio, Arcade, Installed, and All chips. Show 50 catalog entries per page. Keep connected accounts above discovery. Keep explicit provider searches scoped. - Simplify Composio app setup and refresh its connected app list on the gateway Permissions page. - Add a compact agent access card and task creation defaults for connection setup. Preserve explicit blocks and approval policies. - Add two replay-safe migrations, service and UI tests, Storybook journeys, and acceptance stories. ## Verification - Passed the repository typecheck, full build, token gates, and migration ordering check. - Passed the focused provider adapter, connection interaction, and catalog tests after rebasing onto master. - Passed all nine database sync and migration replay tests using a disposable database on the test-drive PostgreSQL cluster. Removed that database after the run. - Verified Arcade cursor pagination against its official Go SDK and passed all eight adapter tests, including short and incomplete pages. - Passed all 45 interaction tests after making the exact requested tools and their Allowed/Ask first permissions visible before granting access. Verified the compact card in Storybook. - Passed the complete UI suite on the final code: 683 files and 7,432 tests, including the corrected Composio destination assertions. Passed 130 focused tests for the UUID, management-link, and health-status corrections. - Passed 22 Composio setup/sync tests, 23 connection-intent service tests, and the connection migration test in separate disposable databases. Database startup alone was substituted; the suites exercised their real SQL and services. - Passed all 10 OpenAPI route checks and the full-stack connection-intent browser test, including scoped consent, agent continuation, and task completion. - The local full runner encountered embedded PostgreSQL startup failures on this loaded macOS host. The earlier in-flight run also held the pre-fix Arcade transform; a fresh run of the final provider suite passes. The final-head CI is queued during GitHub’s active Actions incident: https://www.githubstatus.com/. The previous run also lost several runners simultaneously; its real catalog assertion failures are fixed and the fresh complete UI suite passes. - Tested the real test-drive server in the embedded browser with a live Composio gateway. Detected Airtable and Circleback. Verified refresh progress, account rows, source chips, search scope, and 50-entry pagination. - Arcade and Executor coverage uses provider fixtures. Live credentials were unavailable. - Storybook builds successfully and includes grouped native/provider accounts, stale and unavailable discovery, optional Arcade setup, and mobile states. The acceptance document records the simulated and live coverage separately. - Greptile reviewed final commit `217b024c27b5933e773ce9419c4e92b1032042c6` at 5/5. All six review threads are resolved, security scans pass, and the PR has no merge conflicts. The outstanding remote checks are `ci / Select trusted runner` and `review`, queued by GitHub. They need to complete before merge. ## Risks - Provider response changes can break inventory discovery. Failed scans retain observations and show stale status. - Composio scans only the supported catalog and can take time. Large inventories run in the background with progress and a bounded lease. - Arcade requires a project API key and user ID when the gateway cannot supply them. This key is used only for discovery. - Executor discovery depends on the server's exposed inventory tools. Unsupported servers report unavailable discovery. - Cached account rows do not grant access or create executable connections. Gateway policies still govern tool use. Account deletion and per-app authorization remain upstream. - The migrations add tables and one nullable column. Replay preserves existing rows and company-scoped foreign keys. ## Model Used OpenAI Codex, based on GPT-6. The session does not expose a more specific serving model ID or context limit. Used reasoning, repository tools, code execution, and browser verification. ## 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 - [ ] 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 - [ ] 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.
Runtime authentication: AI Connections.
Long-term memory: Experimental memory connectors.
Provider notes: Google Workspace, Gmail, Asana, PostHog, Neon, AgentMail, and iMessage Photon. 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.