My paperclip issues are frequently blocked.

[grostim]

Hi,

I don't want to open an issue, because i guess this problem is my falut, but i haven't been able to troubleshoot it myself.
Some help from the community is welcome.

I have been experimenting with paperclip for a couple of days, and i am starting to appreciate it.

However, my projects are frequently stuck without clear explanation.

Here is an example:

Another one:

What should i do ?
How can i avoid such blockage ?

[starkmarkus]

From the screenshots, this does not look like the run itself failed. It looks more like Paperclip finished a run, but could not infer the correct next disposition for the issue.

The second message says:

A run finished successfully, but this issue is still open in in_progress with no clear owner for the next action.

So Paperclip seems to be asking for an explicit decision after the agent produced output. In other words, the issue is blocked because the system cannot tell whether the work is done, needs review, needs another run, or is waiting on a human.

I would try to avoid this by making the expected end state very explicit in the issue/task description, for example:

When finished:

• summarize what changed
• say whether the issue is ready for review
• if code was changed, open/prepare a PR
• if blocked, state the blocker and who should act next
• otherwise mark the issue as done

And after each run, I would choose one concrete disposition instead of leaving it in in_progress:

• mark done if the output is sufficient
• send for review if a human should check it
• assign/block it if someone else needs to act
• queue a continuation if the agent should keep working

The “missing disposition recovery blocked” message sounds like Paperclip tried to recover this automatically but could not determine a safe next owner. So the practical fix is probably to give the agent and/or Paperclip a clearer final action rule.

If this happens frequently even with clear instructions, then it may be worth opening an issue with a minimal example, because Paperclip could probably surface a more actionable message here.