DottaandPaperclip
159d006bb4
## Thinking Path > - Paperclip manages AI agents and their connected accounts. > - Login flows bind verified credentials to an owned connection. > - The shared save service currently uses the provider name to choose a session ID column and completion state. > - A provider can support more than one login flow. Provider identity does not define session identity or state. > - This PR gives every flow the same internal session ID contract and lets the setup-token owner complete its own claim. > - Credential writes, session binding, and completion remain in one transaction. ## Linked Issues or Issue Description Refs #17106. This is an independent prerequisite for that sleep cleanup PR. It contains no scheduler or cleanup-worker changes. **Current behavior** The connection save service looks up Anthropic sessions by public ID and all other sessions by internal ID. It also marks every Anthropic session as stored. Local Anthropic login works because its public and internal IDs happen to match, and its caller overwrites that intermediate state. **Proposed behavior** Every caller passes an internal session ID. A small setup-token completion service resolves the public ID within its owner scope and supplies a transaction callback. That callback uses the existing conditional stored transition. Device and local login flows keep their own final states. **Reason and benefit** Adding or changing a login flow no longer requires provider branches in the shared session binding path. The service still owns membership checks, row locking, target validation, credential writes, and idempotent binding. The flow owns only public-ID resolution and its completion transition. **Breaking changes** The internal TypeScript save signature changes. All production callers are updated. Public HTTP payloads, database schema, and local session URLs stay unchanged. ## What Changed - Replace the ambiguous session ID argument with an internal session reference and an optional completion callback. - Run the callback inside the existing save transaction, only for the first successful binding. - Move public-ID resolution and the stored transition to setup-token-ai-connection.ts. - Update setup-token, device, and local callers. - Add real PostgreSQL tests for ID selection, owner and target checks, one-time completion, and rollback after a rejected completion. - Exercise local Anthropic and OpenAI HTTP completion with distinct public and internal IDs. - Document the ownership contract in AI-CONNECTIONS.md. ## Verification - Passed: pnpm -r typecheck. - Passed: pnpm exec vitest run server/src/__tests__/ai-connections.test.ts server/src/__tests__/agent-device-login-routes.test.ts server/src/__tests__/agents-claude-oauth-binding.test.ts — 233 tests. - Passed: pnpm build. - Passed: full CI, including test shards, typecheck, build, and E2E, ond98ce6e504: https://github.com/paperclipai/paperclip/actions/runs/39654210168. - The additional local pnpm test:run was stopped after the full CI pass to avoid duplicating the completed run. It is not reported as a completed local full-suite pass. - Greptile: 5/5 ond98ce6e504, with no actionable findings or unresolved threads. - The first AI suite run had two new fixture failures: a duplicate environment name across provider cases, and an assertion that ignored existing shared connections. The fixtures now use distinct names and query the attempted connection directly. The corrected affected suites passed. The first CI run passed all 1,420 assertions in server shard 11/12 but failed on an unhandled child-process rejection in `workspace-runtime-exposure.test.ts` (the synthetic EADDRINUSE case). Both the test and runtime implementation are unchanged from this PR's base. The two affected parameter cases passed locally unchanged (2 passed, 29 skipped). Inspection shows a possible timing window before the early-exit promise joins the readiness race; that cause has not been reproduced conclusively. The single CI retry passed on the same commit. This demonstrates recovery; the original timing cause was not conclusively reproduced. Original job: https://github.com/paperclipai/paperclip/actions/runs/39654210168/job/119410225203. ## Risks - A completion callback failure must roll back the credential and session binding. The real-database regression test proves this for a rejected setup-token claim. - The callback is internal, awaited inside the existing transaction, and must use the supplied transaction handle. It adds no network work or provider SDK dependency. - Setup-token resolution adds one indexed lookup per completion. The shared save then locks and validates the row again. No recurring work is added. - The setup-token owner now uses the existing conditional completion guard, including the unconsumed-claim and commit-time expiry checks. Invalid claims fail closed. - Live provider sign-in was not exercised; tests use fixture credentials and real PostgreSQL. No schema migration is needed. ## Model Used OpenAI GPT-6 through Codex, with reasoning, source inspection, code editing, and test execution. The exact serving model ID 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>
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, Sentry, PostHog, Neon, Superagent, Gauge, Ditto, AgentMail, Telem.AI, iMessage Photon, and Enterpret. 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.