## Thinking Path
> - Paperclip is the open source app people use to manage AI agents for
work
> - The release subsystem's nightly lane gates every nightly publish on
the release smoke suite, which drives real onboarding in a browser
against the published artifact
> - With the harness fixed (#11187, #11189), the gate reached the
Playwright suite for the first time in CI — and the spec still walks the
old onboarding wizard, so it fails at "Create your first agent" on every
current build
> - The wizard was redesigned to a mission-first five-step flow, and the
spec rotted silently because the suite never ran in CI before
> - This pull request rewrites the spec to drive the current wizard end
to end
> - The benefit is a smoke gate that actually tests today's product,
verified against a real published canary
## Linked Issues or Issue Description
**Subsystem affected**
Release smoke testing:
`tests/release-smoke/docker-auth-onboarding.spec.ts`.
**Problem or motivation**
Nightly run 31431273139 failed in the smoke Playwright suite: the spec
expects the old wizard step "Create your first agent", but current
builds show the redesigned mission-first flow (front door → company →
mission → team lead → connect model → review). The page snapshot in the
run artifact shows the "Define your mission" step where the spec
expected the agent step. Both retries failed identically — this is
deterministic spec drift, not flake.
**Proposed solution**
Rewrite the spec for the current flow: fill the company name, define the
mission directly (confirming creates the company), name the team lead,
hire it through the adapter step — the adapter environment probe reports
unhealthy in the CLI-less smoke container by design and must not block
the hire — then launch to the dashboard. Assert the company, the
ceo-role agent, and the company goal through the API. The first-task and
assignment-run assertions are removed together with the wizard flow that
created them.
## What Changed
- `tests/release-smoke/docker-auth-onboarding.spec.ts`: rewritten for
the mission-first wizard; sign-in and wizard-opening helpers and the
company-name step are unchanged
## Verification
- Full local run against the real nightly candidate: launched the smoke
container for `paperclipai@2026.810.0-canary.3` via
`scripts/docker-onboard-smoke.sh` (with the #11189 bind fix), then ran
`pnpm run test:release-smoke` against it — 1 passed (4.5s)
- After merge: dispatch `release.yml` with `channel: nightly` to run the
full gate in CI
## Risks
- Low. Test-only change. The spec now asserts less about first-task
creation because the wizard no longer creates a first task; if a
first-run trigger returns to onboarding, the spec should grow that
assertion back
## Model Used
Claude Fable 5 (`claude-fable-5`, Anthropic) in Claude Code, with
extended thinking and full tool use (CI artifact forensics, UI source
tracing, local Docker + Playwright reproduction and verification). All
changes model-authored under human direction.
## 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
- [ ] All Paperclip CI gates are green (pending — will confirm before
merge)
- [ ] Greptile is 5/5 with no open P2s, recommendations, or follow-ups
(pending — will confirm before merge)
- [x] I will address all Greptile and reviewer comments before
requesting merge
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