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Get an Outlook/Graph access token without registering an app in Azure AD

Project description

owa-piggy

ci

Turn your existing Outlook Web session into a reusable API token from the terminal.
No app registration, asking a tenant admin or managing client secrets.

brew tap damsleth/tap
brew install owa-piggy
owa-piggy setup                       # creates the 'default' profile
# or, to avoid terminal paste-corruption on long tokens:
# copy the two lines the browser snippet prints, then
pbpaste | owa-piggy setup

Bleeding edge (main): brew install --HEAD damsleth/tap/owa-piggy

Companion tool: owa-cal is a calendar CLI that calls owa-piggy for tokens. The two version independently - any owa-cal >= 0.6 works with any owa-piggy >= 0.6.

Then

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $(owa-piggy)" https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me

Or, for the Outlook REST audience:

curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $(owa-piggy --audience outlook)" \
  "https://outlook.office.com/api/v2.0/me/messages?\$top=1" | jq -r '.value[0].Subject'

CLI surface

owa-piggy <command> [options]

Bare owa-piggy is shorthand for owa-piggy token - the access token goes to stdout, nothing else.

command what it does
token (default) print access token to stdout (default audience: Microsoft Graph)
status compact ISO8601 health summary; all profiles if --profile omitted
debug full setup diagnostics for one profile
setup interactive first-time setup; creates the profile if new
reseed fetch a fresh refresh token headlessly from the Edge sidecar
decode print JWT header and payload of the current access token
remaining print minutes remaining on the current access token
audiences list all known FOCI-accessible audiences
profiles list profiles (TTY: interactive picker)
profiles set-default A make A the default profile
profiles delete A remove profile A's config + Edge sidecar dir (--force to override)

Global options: --profile <alias>, --audience <name>, --scope <explicit>, --version, --help. Per-command help: owa-piggy <command> --help.

Examples

owa-piggy                              # Graph token (default audience)
owa-piggy --audience outlook           # Outlook REST audience
owa-piggy --audience teams             # Teams audience
owa-piggy remaining                    # minutes left on current token
owa-piggy token --json | jq .scope     # inspect granted scopes
owa-piggy status                       # compact ISO8601 health summary
owa-piggy debug                        # full setup diagnostics
owa-piggy --version                    # print version

Pipe-friendly - raw token goes to stdout, everything else to stderr:

# Fetch calendar events via Graph
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $(owa-piggy)" \
  "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me/events" | jq .

# Use in scripts
TOKEN=$(owa-piggy)
az rest --headers "Authorization=Bearer $TOKEN" --url "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me"

Default audience is Microsoft Graph, which covers everything Outlook REST exposes plus OneDrive, Teams, SharePoint, directory, and more. Override persistently with OWA_DEFAULT_AUDIENCE=<short-name-or-https-url>, or per-call with --audience <name> (see owa-piggy audiences) or --scope <explicit>.


How?

OWA (One Outlook Web) is registered in Azure AD as a public SPA client with ID 9199bf20-a13f-4107-85dc-02114787ef48. Public clients require no client secret. SPA refresh tokens live in your browser's localStorage and can be exchanged at Microsoft's standard OAuth2 token endpoint - the only requirement is that the request includes the Origin header AAD expects for SPA clients.

The token comes back with a broad set of delegated scopes: Calendars.ReadWrite, Mail.ReadWrite, Files.ReadWrite, and more. OWA is also a FOCI (Family of Client IDs) member, so the same refresh token works against outlook.office.com, graph.microsoft.com, and other Microsoft first-party APIs.

Token Lifetime
Access token ~60-90 min from issue
Refresh token 24h sliding window (rotates on use) AND 24h absolute hard-cap from original sign-in

The sliding window renews on every exchange. The hard-cap does not - after 24h AAD returns AADSTS700084 and the token is unrecoverable via rotation. The launchd agent handles the sliding window; owa-piggy reseed handles the hard-cap.

The rotated refresh token is saved automatically to ~/.config/owa-piggy/profiles/<alias>/config after every exchange (only when the token originally came from the config file - env-only callers keep env-only semantics and get a rotation notice on stderr). Install a LaunchAgent per profile to keep each sliding window fresh without thinking about it:

./scripts/setup-refresh.sh --profile default     # one profile
./scripts/setup-refresh.sh --all                 # every configured profile

The agents run hourly via launchd's StartCalendarInterval and, unlike cron, fire on wake for any hour that was missed while the Mac was asleep - so an overnight-closed laptop still rotates each profile's token before the 24h sliding window closes.


Automated reseed (24h hard-cap recovery)

Because hourly rotation only keeps the sliding window alive, you still hit AADSTS700084 after 24h of continuous use. owa-piggy reseed is the automated recovery path - it drives a sidecar Edge profile via the Chrome DevTools Protocol, extracts a fresh FOCI refresh token from MSAL's localStorage, and pipes it into owa-piggy setup.

One-time setup of the sidecar profile (per alias):

alias=default   # or work, personal, client-x ...
dir="$HOME/.config/owa-piggy/profiles/$alias/edge-profile"
mkdir -p "$dir"
/Applications/Microsoft\ Edge.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft\ Edge \
  --user-data-dir="$dir" \
  https://outlook.cloud.microsoft
# sign in, then close Edge

Thereafter:

owa-piggy reseed --profile $alias

The scraper detects stale caches (ID token JWT iat > 23h old), forces a Page.reload if MSAL gets wedged, and if session cookies have also expired it reopens Edge visibly so you can sign in interactively and then scrapes again automatically. When things work the whole thing is silent and takes a second or two.

The AADSTS700084 error message from the normal flow also prints hint: run owa-piggy reseed so you don't need to remember the recipe.


Diagnostics

owa-piggy status
authtoken:    expires 2026-04-20T11:46:51Z
audience:     outlook (https://outlook.office.com)
scope(s):     Calendars.ReadWrite, Mail.ReadWrite, Files.ReadWrite, ... (74 scopes)
refreshtoken: expires 2026-04-21T09:30:00Z

Prints no valid token (exit 1) if setup is missing or the live probe fails. The refresh-token expiry is the 24h hard-cap, computed from OWA_RT_ISSUED_AT which is stamped on setup and reseed (setups from before this field landed will show unknown until the next reseed).

owa-piggy debug

Full triage dump: config file state, RT shape, live exchange probe, access-token claims (aud/scp/exp/iat), launchd agent status (gui/<uid>/<label> bootstrap, runs, last exit code), PATH install, Edge sidecar profile presence, reseed script discoverability. Also warns about leftover legacy cron entries.


Security model

This tool deliberately operates within the boundaries of what Microsoft allows for public SPA clients:

  • No credentials stored in Azure - there is no app registration to compromise
  • Delegated permissions only - the token acts as you, with your existing access, nothing more
  • Standard OAuth2 token exchange - no browser automation in the hot path, no cookie theft, no undocumented APIs
  • Your session, your token - the refresh token is the same one OWA already stores in your browser; this tool just makes it usable from the terminal

The token is scoped to your user identity. A password change or admin revocation invalidates it immediately - the same as it would in the browser.

See SECURITY.md for the full threat model and known failure modes.

Per-profile config lives at ~/.config/owa-piggy/profiles/<alias>/config, mode 0600:

OWA_REFRESH_TOKEN="1.AQ..."
OWA_TENANT_ID="xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx"
OWA_RT_ISSUED_AT="2026-04-19T10:15:00Z"

A small registry at ~/.config/owa-piggy/profiles.conf tracks which profiles exist and which is the default.

Writes are atomic (temp file + fsync + rename) so a crash mid-rotation cannot corrupt the only live token. Environment variables take precedence over the config file:

  • OWA_REFRESH_TOKEN, OWA_TENANT_ID - override the corresponding config values (when OWA_REFRESH_TOKEN is env-supplied, rotated tokens are kept env-only and not written back to disk)
  • OWA_CLIENT_ID - override the default OWA client ID
  • OWA_DEFAULT_AUDIENCE - change the default audience (a short name from owa-piggy audiences like outlook, or a full https URL). Command-line --audience / --scope still wins.

Multiple profiles

owa-piggy supports multiple independent tenants / identities via named profiles. Each profile gets its own config, access-token cache, Edge sidecar userdata dir, and launchd job, so a broken reseed on one profile does not knock out the others.

owa-piggy setup --profile work                # create a new profile
owa-piggy setup --profile personal            # ...and another
owa-piggy --profile work                      # raw token for 'work'
OWA_PROFILE=work owa-piggy                    # same, via env
owa-piggy profiles                            # list (TTY: interactive picker)
owa-piggy profiles set-default work           # change the default pointer
owa-piggy status --profile personal           # health check, per profile
owa-piggy reseed --profile work               # recover one profile after 24h
owa-piggy profiles delete personal            # remove a profile (config + Edge)
./scripts/setup-refresh.sh --all              # install a plist for each profile

Selection precedence when --profile is omitted: OWA_PROFILE env var > OWA_DEFAULT_PROFILE in profiles.conf > lone profile on disk > default on fresh installs. If multiple profiles exist but none is marked default, the command errors out rather than guessing.

Legacy single-config installs auto-migrate on first run: ~/.config/owa-piggy/{config,cache.json,edge-profile} move into profiles/default/ atomically and a profiles.conf is written that marks default as the active profile. The legacy launchd plist (com.damsleth.owa-piggy) keeps running until you re-install via ./scripts/setup-refresh.sh --all, which replaces it with per-profile plists labelled com.damsleth.owa-piggy.<alias>.


Caveats

  • Seed from Microsoft Edge. Edge integrates with Microsoft's native SSO broker and stores a real FOCI refresh token (1.AQ...) in MSAL's cache .secret field. Plain Chromium browsers (Vivaldi, Brave, Chrome) fall back to a lighter flow that stores a session-bound opaque token at .data which AAD rejects as malformed (AADSTS9002313). That's also why those browsers log you out of OWA more often - the session token has a shorter fuse.
  • Requires an account with OWA access (Microsoft 365 / Exchange Online)
  • Uses a Microsoft first-party client ID - fine for personal tooling, not for production services or anything you'd ship to other users
  • Refresh tokens are bound to your session; admin revocation or a password change will invalidate them
  • owa-piggy reseed is macOS + Edge specific (uses --user-data-dir profile isolation and Chrome DevTools Protocol). The manual setup flow works everywhere.

Disclaimer

This is a personal CLI tool for people who understand OAuth tokens and their risks.
If you don't know why storing a refresh token on disk might be a bad idea you should not use this.

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