34f8d25089
## Thinking Path > - Paperclip manages AI agents and their work. > - GitHub review bots submit structured assessments through task-bound tools. > - Each repository can set its own finding categories. > - The schema accepts a string, but the server rejects values outside the saved review policy. > - Review instructions did not list the accepted values. The error did not list them either. > - This change gives agents the values before submission and keeps server validation. ## Linked Issues or Issue Description **What happened?** Review submissions failed with an unknown finding category. The agent corrected the assessment before publication. The sampled trace has two rejections followed by a processed review. Historical tool inputs are null. Authorized diagnostic inspection found no saved raw provider trace for the representative run. The exact rejected values remain unknown. **Expected behavior** Agents can find the accepted categories before submission. Unknown values still fail validation. **Steps to reproduce** Set a custom finding category. Start a review. Submit a different category. Before this change, the instructions and error do not list the accepted value. ## What Changed - List configured categories in manual and automatic review instructions. - Return categories from the saved assessment policy in `begin_review`. - Describe the dynamic constraint in the shared discovery schema. Keep custom categories valid. - List accepted values in category errors. Keep authorization and publication checks. - Add contract and database integration tests. Update documentation and access maps. ### Hypothesis and thesis for a fix The missing category guidance can cause avoidable submission retries. A model can also ignore the policy returned by metadata reads; the historical inputs do not establish which occurred. The repair belongs to the GitHub review contract. Use the saved policy categories at review start, explain the constraint, and retain server rejection. A fixed global enum would reject valid custom categories. ## Verification - Baseline `f1d7808`: two new contract assertions failed for missing category guidance and error detail. The same assertions pass after the change. - `pnpm exec vitest run server/src/services/chat-github-review-policy.test.ts server/src/services/chat-github-tools.test.ts`: 41 passed. - `pnpm exec vitest run server/src/__tests__/chat-channels.integration.test.ts -t 'returns snapshot finding categories'`: 1 passed. Real PostgreSQL and service code; simulated GitHub HTTP. Checks policy changes, rejection before publication, accepted custom category persistence, and processed publication. - `node scripts/check-maps.mjs`: passed. Structural evidence only. - Shared TypeScript check passed. Server TypeScript checking was killed by the 8 GiB memory limit, including a separate retry after the other checks stopped. - Full typecheck and build could not complete: `cargo` is absent. Full tests were stopped after concurrent checks exhausted memory. CI must supply the full checks. - Follow-up compiler repair: the unchanged baseline reproduces TS2352 in the category discovery test. Runtime matchers replace the unsafe schema cast. They retain both guidance and custom-category assertions. The repair is commit `0dcb94c676`, with current master merged at `14d7052854`. The final head is `c46b8f35add9255fc71be294d27f5a7865bcb47f`; the remaining code-comment review finding was removed and resolved. - Final-head CI: all gates pass, with no failed or pending checks. Greptile gives this head 5/5 with no outstanding findings; the only inline thread is resolved. The workspace test shard passed on one bounded rerun after an earlier CLI child-server readiness timeout; no code change was made for that rerun. - The review host passed full recursive typecheck and build after the compiler repair and master integration. Fresh database rechecks hit the host PostgreSQL semaphore limit. The full local test command hit a pre-existing chat line-selection failure before assertions. These local limits do not replace the passing final-head CI evidence. - No live model or GitHub publication at the changed revision. No deployment or merge. ## Risks - Instructions add policy text. An agent can still ignore it. - Existing bot catalogs get the schema description when tools are synchronized. Trusted review instructions and `begin_review` also expose categories. - The service test uses simulated GitHub HTTP. It does not prove that deployed agents avoid retries. ## Model Used The original worker used OpenAI `gpt-6.1-sol` through Codex with reasoning, tool use, and code execution. A later Codex review repaired the test compiler error. That review runtime exposes GPT-6 but no exact snapshot or context-window size. ## 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: devinfoley <139239+devinfoley@users.noreply.github.com> Co-authored-by: Paperclip <noreply@paperclip.ing> Co-authored-by: Dotta <bippadotta@protonmail.com> Co-authored-by: cryppadotta <34892728+cryppadotta@users.noreply.github.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.