PaperClipAI/docs/feedback-voting.md

Feedback Voting — Local Data Guide

When you rate an agent's response with Helpful (thumbs up) or Needs work (thumbs down), Paperclip saves your vote locally alongside your running instance. This guide covers what gets stored, how to access it, and how to export it.

How voting works

1. Click Helpful or Needs work on any agent comment or document revision.
2. If you click Needs work, an optional text prompt appears: "What could have been better?" You can type a reason or dismiss it.
3. A consent dialog asks whether to keep the vote local or share it. Your choice is remembered for future votes.

What gets stored

Each vote creates two local records:

Record	What it contains
Vote	Your vote (up/down), optional reason text, sharing preference, consent version, timestamp
Trace bundle	Full context snapshot: the voted-on comment/revision text, issue title, agent info, your vote, and reason — everything needed to understand the feedback in isolation

All data lives in your local Paperclip database. Nothing leaves your machine unless you explicitly choose to share.

When a vote is marked for sharing, Paperclip immediately tries to upload the trace bundle through the Telemetry Backend. The upload is compressed in transit so full trace bundles stay under gateway size limits. If that immediate push fails, the trace is left in a retriable failed state for later flush attempts. The app server never uploads raw feedback trace bundles directly to object storage.

Viewing your votes

Quick report (terminal)

pnpm paperclipai feedback report

Shows a color-coded summary: vote counts, per-trace details with reasons, and export statuses.

# Installed CLI
paperclipai feedback report

# Point to a different server or company
npx paperclipai feedback report --api-base http://127.0.0.1:3000 --company-id <company-id>

# Include raw payload dumps in the report
pnpm paperclipai feedback report --payloads

API endpoints

All endpoints require board-user access (automatic in local dev).

List votes for an issue:

curl http://127.0.0.1:3102/api/issues/<issueId>/feedback-votes

List trace bundles for an issue (with full payloads):

curl 'http://127.0.0.1:3102/api/issues/<issueId>/feedback-traces?includePayload=true'

List all traces company-wide:

curl 'http://127.0.0.1:3102/api/companies/<companyId>/feedback-traces?includePayload=true'

Get a single trace envelope record:

curl http://127.0.0.1:3102/api/feedback-traces/<traceId>

Get the full export bundle for a trace:

curl http://127.0.0.1:3102/api/feedback-traces/<traceId>/bundle

Filtering

The trace endpoints accept query parameters:

Parameter	Values	Description
vote	up, down	Filter by vote direction
status	local_only, pending, sent, failed	Filter by export status
targetType	issue_comment, issue_document_revision	Filter by what was voted on
sharedOnly	true	Only show votes the user chose to share
includePayload	true	Include the full context snapshot
from / to	ISO date	Date range filter

Exporting your data

Export to files + zip

pnpm paperclipai feedback export

Creates a timestamped directory with:

feedback-export-20260331T120000Z/
  index.json                    # manifest with summary stats
  votes/
    PAP-123-a1b2c3d4.json      # vote metadata (one per vote)
  traces/
    PAP-123-e5f6g7h8.json      # Paperclip feedback envelope (one per trace)
  full-traces/
    PAP-123-e5f6g7h8/
      bundle.json              # full export manifest for the trace
      ...raw adapter files     # codex / claude / opencode session artifacts when available
feedback-export-20260331T120000Z.zip

Exports are full by default. traces/ keeps the Paperclip envelope, while full-traces/ contains the richer per-trace bundle plus any recoverable adapter-native files.

Feedback text redaction preserves hostnames, dotted filenames, public schema IDs, and authentication terms such as “bearer tokens.” Dotted text must have an encoded JWT header to be masked as a token. Complete three-part signed tokens and five-part encrypted tokens are masked, including tokens with short segments and direct-encryption tokens with an empty encrypted-key segment. Explicit credentials, secret fields, email addresses, and phone numbers remain masked. The redaction summary counts text that was actually replaced.

# Custom server and output directory
npx paperclipai feedback export --api-base http://127.0.0.1:3000 --company-id <company-id> --out ./my-export

Reading an exported trace

Open any file in traces/ to see:

{
  "id": "trace-uuid",
  "vote": "down",
  "issueIdentifier": "PAP-123",
  "issueTitle": "Fix login timeout",
  "targetType": "issue_comment",
  "targetSummary": {
    "label": "Comment",
    "excerpt": "The first 80 chars of the comment that was voted on..."
  },
  "payloadSnapshot": {
    "vote": {
      "value": "down",
      "reason": "Did not address the root cause"
    },
    "target": {
      "body": "Full text of the agent comment..."
    },
    "issue": {
      "identifier": "PAP-123",
      "title": "Fix login timeout"
    }
  }
}

Open full-traces/<issue>-<trace>/bundle.json to see the expanded export metadata, including capture notes, adapter type, integrity metadata, and the inventory of raw files written alongside it.

Each entry in bundle.json.files[] includes the actual captured file payload under contents, not just a pathname. For text artifacts this is stored as UTF-8 text; binary artifacts use base64 plus an encoding marker.

Built-in local adapters now export their native session artifacts more directly:

• codex_local: adapter/codex/session.jsonl
• claude_local: adapter/claude/session.jsonl, plus any adapter/claude/session/... sidecar files and adapter/claude/debug.txt when present
• opencode_local: adapter/opencode/session.json, adapter/opencode/messages/*.json, and adapter/opencode/parts/<messageId>/*.json, with optional project.json, todo.json, and session-diff.json

Sharing preferences

The first time you vote, a consent dialog asks:

• Keep local — vote is stored locally only (sharedWithLabs: false)
• Share this vote — vote is marked for sharing (sharedWithLabs: true)

Your preference is saved per-company. You can change it any time via the feedback settings. Votes marked "keep local" are never queued for export.

Data lifecycle

Status	Meaning
local_only	Vote stored locally, not marked for sharing
pending	Marked for sharing, saved locally, and waiting for the immediate upload attempt
sent	Successfully transmitted
failed	Transmission attempted but failed (for example the backend is unreachable or not configured); later flushes retry once a backend is available

Your local database always retains the full vote and trace data regardless of sharing status.

Remote sync

Votes you choose to share are sent to the Telemetry Backend immediately from the vote request. The server also keeps a background flush worker so failed traces can retry later. The Telemetry Backend validates the request, then persists the bundle into its configured object storage.

• App server responsibility: build the bundle, POST it to Telemetry Backend, update trace status
• Telemetry Backend responsibility: authenticate the request, validate payload shape, compress/store the bundle, return the final object key
• Retry behavior: failed uploads move to failed with an error message in failureReason, and the worker retries them on later ticks
• Default endpoint: when no feedback export backend URL is configured, Paperclip falls back to https://telemetry.paperclip.ing
• Important nuance: the uploaded object is a snapshot of the full bundle at vote time. If you fetch a local bundle later and the underlying adapter session file has continued to grow, the local regenerated bundle may be larger than the already-uploaded snapshot for that same trace.

Exported objects use a deterministic key pattern so they are easy to inspect:

feedback-traces/<companyId>/YYYY/MM/DD/<exportId-or-traceId>.json