Files
PaperClipAI/doc/connections
DottaandPaperclip 8d6232e7b0 feat: reuse provider sign-in across AI connection workflows (#13248)
## Thinking Path

> - Paperclip is the open source app people use to manage AI agents for
work.
> - Users connect provider accounts during onboarding and agent setup.
> - They should reuse and manage those accounts through the existing
Connectors interface.
> - A second login wizard would diverge from the established provider
workflows.
> - This pull request composes the existing sign-in components into
Connections and agent configuration.
> - Users can select accounts without changing their agent's harness or
model.

## Linked Issues or Issue Description

**Problem or motivation**
AI credentials are configured separately from Connections. Agents cannot
consistently reuse a responsible user's account or a permitted shared
account.

**Proposed solution**
Manage AI accounts with the existing Connections grants and permissions.
Keep model and harness selection independent from credential selection.
Preserve legacy authentication until validated adoption.

**Alternatives considered**
A separate credential registry would duplicate ownership and access
policy. Automatic fallback would risk using the wrong account.

**Roadmap alignment**
This extends the shipped Apps, multi-user, secrets, and agent-runtime
capabilities. The maintainer requested the feature and reviewed the UI.
Related groundwork: #11899 (connection permissions), #10910 (connection
wizard), #11692 (Claude subscription profiles), and #11854 (Codex
account rotation).

## What Changed

- Add compact AI-account management to the existing Connectors pages.
- Reuse AgentProviderConnection, AdapterLoginPanel, AdapterLoginChrome,
and authentication controllers.
- Add the shared connection picker to agent setup/settings and task
requests.
- Preserve onboarding's sequence and reuse existing accounts.
- Add local-login recovery, retry, cancellation, and React StrictMode
handling.
- Add interactive Storybook scenarios, design-guide examples, and app
acceptance checks.

This is part 2 of the AI Connections change. The runtime foundation in
#13247 is merged. This PR now targets master.

## Verification

- Updated against master `47ded8bf9`, including the landed runtime
foundation and upstream task-search changes.
- Full workspace typecheck, production build, Storybook build, and token
gates passed on the integrated branch. Final local-login changes passed
59 focused tests; new-agent and inbox regression suites passed 63 tests.
- Browser checks verified automatic local Claude account detection,
resumable Codex login commands, retry, focus restoration, and
desktop/phone layouts. Commands create their isolated directory before
invoking the CLI.
- All CI test, browser, build, packaging, and runner jobs passed on
final head `dd17d3211931dd70aaa6ea619d83a7f9966dd18e`. The fresh
Greptile review is 5/5, the security scan passed, and there are no
unresolved review threads. The final CI aggregate gates passed.
- Local general-server coverage passed 11,804 tests; three
port-collision failures passed in an isolated 25-test rerun. All 6,111
UI tests passed. CLI coverage passed 484 tests; its remaining doctor
test requires port 3199, which is occupied by an unrelated report server
on this Mac. The complete CLI suite passed in CI.
- Live browser testing verified Codex API-key reconnect inside a task
card on desktop and phone. Real provider runs resumed and completed with
unchanged connection/grant identity and agent routing.
- Tested opening, cancelling, reopening, and completing connection
creation. A regression confirms Connect another account cannot submit
the new-agent form or copy provider keys into agent settings.
- Added shared inline repair, automatic local sign-in checks, and
responsive connection dialogs. Standalone Daytona installation ignores
workspace configuration and suppresses dependency scripts. Its
standalone build also passed with CI's exact pnpm 9.15.4.
- Destructive live tests are excluded by default. Explicit opt-in, local
deployment checks, and matching disposable fixture identities are
required before any mutation.

## Risks

- Local Codex/Grok creation requires the connection-specific terminal
login command.
- Browser sign-in uses the existing supported-environment controllers.
- This update verifies live local Claude detection and Codex API-key
task repair. New subscription authorization/refresh and
independent-human/native-runner isolation were not reverified in this
update.
- No agent automatically adopts managed Connections.

## Model Used

OpenAI GPT-6 through Codex, with reasoning, repository tools, code
execution, and browser testing. The exact runtime model identifier and
context-window size are not exposed in this session.

## 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
- [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>
2026-09-12 16:51:26 -05:00
..

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.

Provider notes: Google Workspace, Gmail, PostHog, 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_secrets as 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:

  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, 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.