Creating a Paperclip Agent Adapter
An adapter bridges Paperclip's orchestration layer to a specific AI agent runtime (Claude Code, Codex CLI, a custom process, an HTTP endpoint, etc.). Each adapter is a self-contained package that provides implementations for three consumers: the server, the UI, and the CLI.
1. Architecture Overview
packages/adapters/<name>/
src/
index.ts # Shared metadata (type, label, models, agentConfigurationDoc)
server/
index.ts # Server exports: execute, sessionCodec, parse helpers
execute.ts # Core execution logic (AdapterExecutionContext -> AdapterExecutionResult)
parse.ts # Stdout/result parsing for the agent's output format
ui/
index.ts # UI exports: parseStdoutLine, buildConfig
parse-stdout.ts # Line-by-line stdout -> TranscriptEntry[] for the run viewer
build-config.ts # CreateConfigValues -> adapterConfig JSON for agent creation form
cli/
index.ts # CLI exports: formatStdoutEvent
format-event.ts # Colored terminal output for `paperclipai run --watch`
package.json
tsconfig.json
Three separate registr…