worldmonitor/public/auth.md

WorldMonitor — Agent Authentication (auth.md)

How agents authenticate with the WorldMonitor API and MCP server (https://worldmonitor.app/mcp), per the WorkOS auth.md spec: https://workos.com/auth-md. Discovery is open; data calls need a bearer token or API key.

Before anything else — send a descriptive User-Agent (e.g. mytool/1.0 (+https://yoursite.example)). Default HTTP-library UAs (curl/*, python-requests/*, empty/short strings) may be challenged with an HTML 403 by the edge firewall before your request reaches the API — a 403 does not mean the endpoint is missing or your credentials are wrong.

Discover

Learn the auth requirements from one unauthenticated request, then follow the chain:

1. Call any data method without credentials; read the WWW-Authenticate header:

   401 Unauthorized
   WWW-Authenticate: Bearer resource_metadata="https://worldmonitor.app/.well-known/oauth-protected-resource"
   

2. GET /.well-known/oauth-protected-resource (RFC 9728) → the resource id and its authorization_servers.

3. GET /.well-known/oauth-authorization-server (RFC 8414) → the OAuth endpoints plus the agent_auth block that points back here:

   { "issuer": "https://worldmonitor.app",
     "agent_auth": {
       "skill": "https://worldmonitor.app/auth.md",
       "register_uri": "https://worldmonitor.app/oauth/register",
       "claim_uri": "https://worldmonitor.app/oauth/authorize",
       "identity_types_supported": ["anonymous"],
       "anonymous": { "credential_types_supported": ["access_token"],
                      "claim_uri": "https://worldmonitor.app/oauth/authorize" } } }
   

   Metadata is per-host: issuer and endpoints match the origin you fetched (worldmonitor.app or api.worldmonitor.app).

Pick a method

identity_types_supported advertises anonymous — register without asserting a user identity; a human consents interactively at authorization (see Claim). Two credentials:

• access_token (anonymous) — OAuth 2.1 bearer via Dynamic Client Registration + authorization-code + PKCE (see Register). For interactive agents such as Claude.
• api_key — not anonymous: a signed-in user mints it from the dashboard, so it carries that identity. For headless, server-to-server use.

identity_assertion is not supported. No pre-issued identity assertion (e.g. an urn:ietf:params:oauth:token-type:id-jag id-jag token) is exchanged for credentials — there is no identity or token-exchange endpoint. Identity is always established interactively.

Register

RFC 7591 Dynamic Client Registration at the register_uri:

POST /oauth/register  {"client_name":"My Agent","redirect_uris":["https://claude.ai/api/mcp/auth_callback"]}
→ 201 {"client_id":"…","token_endpoint_auth_method":"none","grant_types":["authorization_code","refresh_token"]}

redirect_uris are allowlisted (Claude callbacks + http://localhost / http://127.0.0.1 on any port). Clients are public — no secret; use PKCE (S256). API-key path: start at https://worldmonitor.app/pro, then use the signed-in dashboard's API Keys settings to self-issue or revoke keys — no registration call.

Claim

Anonymous agents are claimed at authorization time, not via a separate endpoint — so agent_auth.claim_uri is the authorization endpoint itself. Start the authorization-code flow with a PKCE challenge:

GET /oauth/authorize?response_type=code&client_id=…&code_challenge=…&code_challenge_method=S256&scope=mcp

The user signs in and approves; that binds the issued token to their account. For API keys the claim is implicit — the key belongs to its dashboard creator.

Use the credential

Exchange the code for a bearer token, then send it on every request:

POST /oauth/token  grant_type=authorization_code&code=…&code_verifier=…&client_id=…
→ {"access_token":"…","token_type":"Bearer","expires_in":3600,"refresh_token":"…"}

POST /mcp   Authorization: Bearer <access_token>   (or)   X-WorldMonitor-Key: <api_key>

The same credentials authorize the REST API. Catalog: https://worldmonitor.app/.well-known/api-catalog.

Errors

• 401 — missing/expired/invalid credential; response carries WWW-Authenticate: Bearer … resource_metadata="…" — restart at Discover. Over MCP the JSON-RPC code is -32001.
• 400 — invalid_redirect_uri (outside the allowlist), unsupported_grant_type (only authorization_code / refresh_token / client_credentials), or invalid_grant (expired/consumed/revoked token).
• 429 — registration/token endpoints are rate-limited per IP; back off.

Revocation

• Expiry — access tokens last 1 hour, refresh tokens 7 days; let them lapse to de-authorize an agent.
• User revoke — a signed-in user revokes an agent from the dashboard's API Keys or Connected MCP Clients settings; start at https://worldmonitor.app/pro. The token is then rejected with 401 / invalid_grant.
• Refresh rotation — refresh tokens rotate on every use with token-family revocation, so a stolen token dies once the real client next refreshes.

No standalone machine revocation endpoint — revoke via the dashboard or let the credential expire.