Connection Hub

One authority for delegated access in an ecosystem of services, agents, and automations.

The identity provider exists because many applications need one authority on who the user is. Delegated access needs its own authority the same way: when agents, automations, and external tools act on a user's behalf against many services, someone has to hold the answer to "what may this caller do right now, for which user, on which accounts". Connection Hub is that component.

Every caller gets its own delegated-access card: a live, versioned record of whose authority it uses, which resources and operations it may reach, which connected accounts it may touch, and until when. The deployment publishes an active capability catalog: the ceiling of what may be delegated at all. A guarded service resolves the current card intersected with the active catalog on every call. Authorization never travels inside tokens, so there is nothing to copy between executions, and an edit or revocation applies on the very next call.

user (grantor) --edits/revokes--> +----------- Connection Hub -----------+
                                  | delegated cards: one per caller,     |
                                  | versioned, with a current pointer    |
                                  | active capability catalog: the       |
                                  | deployment ceiling, versioned        |
                                  +------------------+-------------------+
                                                     | resolved per call:
caller --opaque bearer--> guarded operation boundary | bearer x current card
                                                     | x active catalog
                                  allow with bounded authority, or a
                                  structured denial the caller can act on

This package is for both sides of that boundary:

• service owners who want their operations admitted through the hub: registration, per-call admission, workload proof, structured denials;
• client and agent authors whose code calls guarded services: the client SDK, grant checks, one-call tokens, denial-driven consent.

The package is the portable core: contracts, state machines, admission evaluation, OAuth protocol builders, the client SDK. A host supplies HTTP routes, sessions, storage, and secret resolution. KDCube is the first host (the complete Connection Hub application ships in this repository as connection-hub@1-0); a standalone service host is planned.

Install

python -m pip install connection-hub

0.0.6 is an alpha release. It keeps the package's authority and client contracts unchanged while placing the package and hosted application under one Connection Hub product root and correcting their public source links.

Flow 1: a guarded service registers itself and admits calls

A backend that wants the hub to regulate its admissions does three things.

Register once (configuration on the hub, not code): declare the capability rows the service exposes (grants, resources, operations) in the hub's delegated catalog, and register the service as a workload: a service id, a secret reference, and selectors of the declared resources. The registration does not restate operations; the catalog stays the single vocabulary both sides speak.

Per request, ask for admission. The caller arrives with an opaque delegated bearer. The service builds the semantic request, signs it with its own workload secret (possession of a user bearer is not service identity), and asks the hub:

import secrets, time

from connection_hub.delegated_credentials.admission import (
    AdmissionRequest,
    sign_admission_request,
)

request = AdmissionRequest(
    resource="https://api.example.test/customers",
    operation="customers.search",
)
timestamp = str(int(time.time()))
nonce = secrets.token_urlsafe(24)
signature = sign_admission_request(
    secret=service_signing_secret,
    service_id="crm-api",
    timestamp=timestamp,
    nonce=nonce,
    delegated_token=user_delegated_bearer,
    request=request,
)
# POST request.signing_dict() to the hub's admission endpoint with
# Authorization: Bearer <user_delegated_bearer> and the four
# X-Connection-Hub-* proof headers (service id, timestamp, nonce, signature).

Enforce the decision. An allow carries a pairwise service-scoped subject and only the bounded authority for that one operation, never provider credentials and never the platform's internal user id. A denial is structured and actionable:

{
  "ok": false, "allowed": false,
  "schema": "connection_hub.delegated_admission.v1",
  "error": {"code": "delegated_capability_not_granted",
             "message": "...", "retryable": false},
  "ret": {"reason": "delegated_capability_not_granted",
           "details": {"resource": "...", "claims": ["..."]}}
}

The service still applies its own domain rules after admission; the hub answers delegation, the service answers business.

Runnable end to end: the direct-admission-service example and the deployment recipe.

Flow 2: an external client connects through OAuth

When an external agent client (Claude Code through its connector, or any MCP client) reaches a guarded service, the hub runs the handshake:

external client                       Connection Hub host
  | 1. call the service URL without a credential
  |    <- 401 + WWW-Authenticate, protected-resource metadata (RFC 9728)
  | 2. fetch authorization-server metadata (RFC 8414; also served as
  |    openid-configuration so strict clients proceed)
  | 3. identify: pre-registered client, client-id URL (CIMD), or
  |    dynamic registration (DCR)
  | 4. authorize with PKCE (S256 required)
  |    -> the USER logs in, consents per capability, and binds the
  |       exact connected accounts the client may use
  | 5. exchange the single-use code (60 s) for an opaque bearer (1 h,
  |    rotating refresh); a delegated card is created for this client
  | 6. every subsequent call resolves the current card and active
  |    catalog; nothing is decided from the token alone
  | 7. the user edits or revokes the card at any time; the very next
  |    call obeys (RFC 7009 revocation retires the card too)

The consent screen is not a blanket yes: the user selects capabilities and binds specific provider accounts, and that selection becomes the card. Full protocol, descriptor contract, and failure modes: OAuth delegated credential protocol.

Flow 3: calling from code, the client SDK

A hosted agent or application talks to the hub through ConnectionsClient over a one-method host transport:

from connection_hub import ConnectionsClient

client = ConnectionsClient(transport)  # transport: async call(operation, payload)

# what is connected, and what may this caller do
entries = await client.catalog()                       # list[CatalogEntry]
check = await client.agent_grant_check(
    client_id="kdcube-agent:myapp:myagent",
    namespace="mem", operation="object.search",
)                                                       # governed/granted + claims

# one-call credentials, resolved by the hub, never stored by the caller
token = await client.get_token("google", account_id="acc-1")
bearer = await client.agent_grant_token(
    client_id="kdcube-agent:myapp:myagent",
    resource="https://host/api/public/mcp/named_services",
)                                                       # None while consent is pending

When a call is denied because a consent is missing, the denial carries everything needed to recover: which permission, which provider, which account, and where the user grants it. The mcp_consent module turns such denials into a structured ask the agent can surface and retry after the grant lands.

What the package owns, and what a host supplies

The package owns portable authority semantics: versioned cards and catalogs, per-call admission for managed REST, MCP, and named-service calls, the OAuth protocol builders, connected-account policy, structured denials, the client SDK, and explicit ports for storage, identity, dispatch, secrets, and live delivery. The host supplies the HTTP surfaces, authenticated sessions, durable storage and its Redis projections, secret resolution, and the UI. The boundary is documented in package extraction architecture.

Documentation

• Configuration and capabilities overview
• Connection Hub architecture and semantic requirements
• Delegated authority and admission
• Delegated access cards
• OAuth delegated credential protocol
• Direct protected-service recipe
• Package release procedure

License: MIT. Source: https://github.com/elenaviter/app-ecosystem