paperclip/tests/lifecycle-baseline

Lifecycle behavior baseline

This suite establishes a measurement before removing narrative/regex authority from lifecycle decisions. The original baseline changes no production policy. Assertions describe intended behavior; observed failures are retained rather than blessed as expected outcomes. Subsequent fixes and fresh measurements are recorded separately.

Recorded results moved to paperclip-evals

The 16 saved result JSON files and seven dated measurement reports now live in the lifecycle authority archive in the private paperclip-evals repository. Links below pin the archive commit. The migration manifest records original paths and checksums. JSON measurements are unchanged, including failed and partial attempts; report edits only repair links to application files.

Executable tests, fixtures, graders, run commands, and the scenario inventory remain here. These tests do not require the archive or access to the private repository. New runs still write ignored local output under .lifecycle-baseline/; archive retained measurements in paperclip-evals, with their source revisions and coverage, instead of committing result snapshots to the app repository.

Measurement	Archived report (private)	Published Product E2E report
September 21 — deterministic baseline	Report	Deterministic tests; run locally below
September 21 — initial live baseline	Report	Campaign 35672810261
September 21 — cancellation and fixture fixes	Report	Campaign 35680906634
September 22 — continuation authority	Report	Campaign 35747200170
September 22 — explicit work mode	Report	Campaign 35806360797
September 22 — accounting baseline	Report	Campaign 35813099816
September 23 — accounting fixes and PR verification	Report	Campaign 35881382080

The public reports remain available without private-repository access. Each campaign measures its recorded source and selected cells; this index does not combine them into one score or qualify later revisions. Large logs, traces, videos, and browser reports stay in existing campaign artifact storage.

Run and inspect

From an installed Paperclip checkout:

pnpm test:lifecycle-baseline --list
pnpm test:lifecycle-baseline unit
pnpm test:lifecycle-baseline runner
pnpm test:lifecycle-baseline integration
pnpm test:lifecycle-baseline grading
pnpm test:lifecycle-baseline
pnpm test:lifecycle-baseline:support
pnpm exec tsc -p tests/lifecycle-baseline/tsconfig.json

All four lanes are credential-free. The integration lane uses disposable embedded Postgres and scripted providers. No command above invokes a model, starts a paid campaign, or changes an existing Paperclip instance. Tests are outside default server/workspace discovery; Product E2E matcher calibration remains in its normal opt-in support suite. The baseline command returns nonzero on failed assertions, missing evidence, or unavailable selected coverage. Ordinary CI is unaffected.

Each invocation retains an independent directory under .lifecycle-baseline/:

• baseline.md and baseline.json: scenario inventory joined to actual assertions;
• per-lane Vitest JSON: complete assertion results, durations, and failures;
• observation JSONL: fixture inputs/classifications and actual authority effects, including both sides of narrative pairs and persisted heartbeat outcomes;
• source.diff: tracked implementation delta from the recorded commit.

The commit plus fingerprint covers tracked differences and untracked authored files. Keep the worktree or commit its tests with retained measurements when comparing revisions. The scripted report marks live coverage not_run; use the separate live Actions record for provider measurements. Authored definitions and passing grader calibration are not proof of real provider behavior. A test suite that cannot load is an evidence/harness failure, not a product finding. Skips are unavailable coverage, never a pass. Failed assertions require triage; raw runner/provider text is not uploaded by this command.

Scenario inventory

inventory.mjs is the executable mapping. References to existing suites reuse their actual assertions rather than duplicating test bodies or counting catalog entries as executed tests. The report records which matching assertions ran.

ID	Scenario	Contract
LCA-01	Ordinary completion	Valid completion, delivered response, no extra execution
LCA-02	Productive multiple turns	Continue appropriate work without repeating completed operations
LCA-03	Human question	Durable question, matching response, one causal continuation
LCA-04	Approval/decline	Correct actor and approval; other admission gates still apply
LCA-05	Planning/revision	Work mode and exact accepted revision authorize execution
LCA-06	Dependencies	Satisfied dependency condition wakes the parent once
LCA-07	External monitor	Durable eligible wait, one-shot wake, bounded expiry/retry
LCA-08	Conversation	Deliver the reply without forcing task completion or repair loops
LCA-09	Missing disposition	Bounded explicit repair; comments/restarts do not reset attempts
LCA-10	Stop/pause/budget	Preserve distinct semantics; no unauthorized continuation
LCA-11	Terminal ordering	Completion report, provider terminal, and cleanup remain distinct
LCA-12	Replay/restart/ownership	Preserve receipts and budgets; fence stale finalizers
LCA-13	Review	Concrete reviewer/owner and authoritative review outcome

Troublesome combinations included in the inventory and reused suites:

• Completion followed by failure/cancellation or stream closure without terminal.
• Approval while paused/over budget; response arriving during input handoff/cleanup.
• Reassignment/closure before late finalization; restart between commit and delivery.
• Exhaustion followed by commentary versus an authorized new user request.
• Stale plan revision approval; duplicate question/dependency/reconciler events.
• Wrong company/task or unauthorized resolution; productive versus failure retries.

Narrative pairs and positive controls

authority.test.ts records the legacy classifier for diagnostic comparison and executes the production structured continuation decision. Assertions compare scheduling decisions rather than requiring diagnostic labels to be identical. The persisted legacy authority tests cover replay, restart, exhaustion and dispatch gates; they also run in the ordinary server suite. Native pairs exercise the actual status arbiter. The heartbeat cases cross the real persistence/finalization boundary for both runtimes, including explicit native continuation and the legacy missing-disposition path. Observations precede cleanup; a second queue/drain pass checks for additional dispatch. This is not proof about arbitrary future timers: the existing monitor/retry/reconciler suites separately exercise due-time policy.

Vary summaries/results, existing comment bodies, continuation summaries, stdout, stderr, titles, and descriptions. Variants cover negation, historical quotation, Spanish, optional next steps, unsupported completion claims, encouraging prose, and empty narrative. Commentary-only evidence must not manufacture progress. Keep authority identical for each pair. Positive controls change real status, approval, continuation, budget, or ownership with identical prose. New authenticated user messages are separate causal events, not interchangeable text.

Scripted runner tests validate actual session/event behavior and structured-result contracts. They do not prove OS termination or real provider compliance. Native replacement tests inject verifier evidence at their documented boundary. Route unit tests mock services; database suites test persisted application behavior. These proof boundaries must remain visible when interpreting the baseline.

Live evals

The dedicated live lifecycle suite adds 40 explicitly selected real-LLM/browser cells on both runtime generations. It was authored after the initial scripted baseline and has now run on GitHub Actions; see the separate live record for measured outcomes. Use pnpm test:e2e:runner -- --list --suite lifecycle-baseline to inspect it.

Product E2E uses the existing continuation, agent-chat, and everyday-workflows catalogs. Continuation now retains an explicit lifecycle snapshot at each browser checkpoint and grades pending question identity, plan revision binding, original run receipts, and the absence of execution/recovery paths after completion. The grader has valid/wrong/missing-evidence calibration. The continuation definition version advances so measurements are distinguishable.

Validate/discover without spending:

pnpm test:e2e:runner:typecheck
pnpm test:e2e:runner:unit
pnpm test:e2e:runner -- --list --suite continuation
pnpm test:e2e:runner -- --list --suite agent-chat
pnpm test:e2e:runner -- --list --suite everyday-workflows

The sibling paperclip-evals change adds the opt-in rosters/live-lifecycle-narrative-baseline.json: ordinary finish/block controls, two misleading-summary variants, and question/review/dependency/wake cases. It does not expand the maintained paid campaign. Both cases and the roster are validated without providers; successful, wrong-state, missing-tool, and extra-wake evidence calibrate their actual grader.

For subsequent live execution use existing explicit selectors and record exact App/Evals revisions, profile/environment, retries, usage/cost, and artifact IDs. See doc/evals.md. Do not combine mock-authority Runner Eval scores with Product E2E scores, or claim full qualification from a partial selection.

September 22 follow-up: legacy continuation implementation and verification, including preserved failed campaigns and the remaining backlog.

The continuation accounting matrix adds ACCT-01 through ACCT-04 for separate allowances, false progress, late gates and restart/replay. Its real-provider companion is the explicit-only continuation-accounting Product E2E suite. The September 22 measurement records the enabled failures and preserves both initial and corrected live campaigns. The September 23 fixes and fresh verification retain the original measurements and cover separate persisted allowances, delayed repair promotion and the current native question/response continuation contract.

The inexpensive browser regressions use real Chromium without a provider or Paperclip instance. They check screenshot readiness and development service-worker module revalidation across repeated reloads:

pnpm exec playwright test --config tests/runner-e2e/playwright-support.config.ts

Set PAPERCLIP_PLAYWRIGHT_CHANNEL=chrome to use an installed Chrome browser.