paperclipai/paperclip · error

Persisted Cloud runtime identity is malformed

Error message

Persisted Cloud runtime identity is malformed

What it means

Validation error thrown by parsePersistedIdentity in cloud-runtime-identity.ts. It fires when the persisted Cloud runtime identity row (from the general settings store) does not match the expected v1 shape: value.v !== 1 or any of stackId, claimId, previousOrigin, canonicalOrigin, stackSlug is missing or not a string. This is a generic guard against a corrupted, partially-written, or older-version identity record; the faulty input is the persisted identity document itself.

Source

Thrown at server/src/services/cloud-runtime-identity.ts:110

    stackSlug: row.stackSlug,
    appliedAt: row.appliedAt,
  };
}

function parsePersistedIdentity(row: {
  general: Record<string, unknown>;
  createdAt: Date;
}): PersistedRuntimeIdentity {
  const value = row.general;
  if (
    value.v !== 1
    || typeof value.stackId !== "string"
    || typeof value.claimId !== "string"
    || typeof value.previousOrigin !== "string"
    || typeof value.canonicalOrigin !== "string"
    || typeof value.stackSlug !== "string"
  ) {
    throw new Error("Persisted Cloud runtime identity is malformed");
  }
  return {
    stackId: value.stackId,
    claimId: value.claimId,
    previousOrigin: value.previousOrigin,
    canonicalOrigin: value.canonicalOrigin,
    stackSlug: value.stackSlug,
    appliedAt: row.createdAt,
  };
}

async function readPersistedIdentity(db: RuntimeIdentityDb): Promise<PersistedRuntimeIdentity | null> {
  const row = await db
    .select({
      general: instanceSettings.general,
      createdAt: instanceSettings.createdAt,
    })
    .from(instanceSettings)

View on GitHub (pinned to 01ad858492)

Solutions

1. Inspect the persisted identity row and delete/reset it so a fresh Cloud runtime identity claim can be written on next startup
2. Verify the instance was not downgraded from a newer schema version (v mismatch) and migrate the record instead of failing
3. Log which specific field failed validation to distinguish corruption from a version mismatch

When it happens

Trigger: Thrown at server/src/services/cloud-runtime-identity.ts:110 when the library encounters an invalid state.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

Understand the failure class

• Parsing and encoding errors: unexpected token, malformed input — why parsers reject input and how to find the real culprit.

AI-assisted analysis of paperclipai/paperclip@01ad858492 (2026-09-10). Data as JSON: /api/errors/b19388b65a9b48af. Report an issue: GitHub.