paperclipai/paperclip · error · Error

Plugin migrations cannot delete data

Error message

Plugin migrations cannot delete data

What it means

Migration policy guard: the statement contains DELETE FROM. Phase 1 plugin migrations may only perform DDL or namespace-scoped backfills (insert/update), never row deletion, to guarantee migrations are non-lossy; the deleting migration is at fault.

Source

Thrown at server/src/services/plugin-database.ts:204

    throw new Error(`Plugin SQL contains a disallowed statement or clause: ${matched.source}`);
  }
}

export function validatePluginMigrationStatement(
  statement: string,
  namespace: string,
  coreReadTables: readonly PluginDatabaseCoreReadTable[] = [],
): void {
  assertIdentifier(namespace, "namespace");
  assertNoBannedSql(statement);

  const normalized = normaliseSql(statement);
  if (/^\s*(drop|truncate)\b/.test(normalized)) {
    throw new Error("Destructive plugin migrations are not allowed in Phase 1");
  }

  if (/\bdelete\s+from\b/.test(normalized)) {
    throw new Error("Plugin migrations cannot delete data");
  }

  const ddlOrBackfillAllowed =
    /^(create|alter|comment)\b/.test(normalized) ||
    /^(insert\s+into|update)\b/.test(normalized) ||
    (normalized.startsWith("with ") && /\b(insert\s+into|update)\b/.test(normalized));
  if (!ddlOrBackfillAllowed) {
    throw new Error("Plugin migrations may contain DDL or namespace-scoped backfill statements only");
  }

  const refs = extractQualifiedRefs(statement);
  if (refs.length === 0 && !normalized.startsWith("comment ")) {
    throw new Error("Plugin migration objects must use fully qualified schema names");
  }

  const objectRefKeywords = new Set([
    "alter table",
    "create index",

View on GitHub (pinned to 120ae5428f)

Solutions

1. Remove DELETE/data-deleting statements from the plugin migration.

When it happens

Trigger: Thrown at server/src/services/plugin-database.ts:204 when the library encounters an invalid state.

Common situations: See trigger scenarios.

AI-assisted analysis of paperclipai/paperclip@120ae5428f (2026-08-18). Data as JSON: /api/errors/d28ebb04421a636a. Report an issue: GitHub.