JWT Auth

Use a customized login flow to authenticate users

If you don’t have a dashboard, or if you want to keep your dashboard and docs completely separate, you can use your own login flow to send user info to your docs via a JWT in the URL.

Implementation

1

Generate a private key

Go to your Mintlify dashboard settings and generate a private key. Store this key somewhere secure where it can be accessed by your backend.

2

Create a login flow

Create a login flow that does the following:

• Authenticate the user
• Create a JWT containing the authenticated user’s info in the UserInfo format
• Sign the JWT with the secret
• Create a redirect URL back to your docs, including the JWT as the hash

3

Configure your User Auth settings

Return to your Mintlify dashboard settings and add the login URL to your User Auth settings.

Example

I want to set up authentication for my docs hosted at docs.foo.com. I want my docs to be completely separate from my dashboard (or I don’t have a dashboard at all).

To set up authentication with Mintlify, I go to my Mintlify dashboard and generate a JWT secret. I create a web URL https://foo.com/docs-login that initiates a login flow for my users. At the end of this login flow, once I have verified the identity of the user, I create a JWT containing the user’s custom data according to Mintlify’s specification. I sign this JWT with my Mintlify secret, create a redirect URL of the form https://docs.foo.com#{SIGNED_JWT}, and redirect the user.

I then go to the Mintlify dashboard settings and enter https://foo.com/docs-login for the Login URL field.