paskia 0.13.0

Passkey Auth made easy: all sites and APIs can be guarded even without any changes on the protected site.

Paskia

An easy to install passkey-based authentication service that protects any web application with strong passwordless login.

What is Paskia?

• Easy to use fully featured auth&auth system (login and permissions)
• Organization and role-based access control
  • Org admins control their users and roles
  • Multiple independent orgs
  • Master admin can do everything or delegate to org admins
• User Profile and Admin by API and web interface
• Implements login/reauth/forbidden flows for you
• Single Sign-On (SSO): Users register once and authenticate across your services
• Remote autentication by entering random keywords from another device (like 2fa)
• No CORS, NodeJS or anything extra needed.

Authenticate to get to your app, or in your app

• API fetch: auth checks and login without leaving your app
• Forward-auth proxy: protect any unprotected site or service (Caddy, Nginx)

The API mode is useful for applications that can be customized to run with Paskia. Forward auth can also protect your javascript and other assets. Each provides fine-grained permission control and reauthentication requests where needed, and both can be mixed where needed.

Authentication flows already done

Automatic light/dark mode switching with overrides by user profile and protected app's theme.

Paskia includes set of login, reauthentication and forbidden dialogs that it can use to perform the needed flows. We never leave the URL, no redirections, and if you make use of API mode, we won't even interrupt whatever your app was doing but retry the blocked API fetch after login like nothing happened.

Quick Start

Install UV and run:

uvx paskia --rp-id example.com

On the first run it downloads the software and prints a registration link for the Admin. The server starts on localhost:4401, serving authentication for *.example.com. For local testing, leave out --rp-id.

For production you need a web server such as Caddy to serve HTTPS on your actual domain names and proxy requests to Paskia and your backend apps (see documentation below).

For a permanent install of paskia CLI command, not needing uvx:

uv tool install paskia

Configuration

You will need to specify your main domain to which all passkeys will be tied as rp-id. Use your main domain even if Paskia is not running there. All other options are optional.

paskia [options]

Option	Description	Default
-l, --listen endpoint	Listen address: host:port, :port (all interfaces), or /path.sock	localhost:4401
--rp-id domain	Main/top domain for passkeys	localhost
--rp-name "text"	Branding name for the entire system (passkey auth, login dialog).	Same as rp-id
--origin url	Only sites listed can login (repeatable)	rp-id and all subdomains
--auth-host url	Dedicated authentication site, e.g. auth.example.com	Use /auth/ path on each site
--save	Save current options to database	(only --rp-id required on further invocations)

To clear a stored setting, pass an empty value like --auth-host=. The database is stored in {rp-id}.paskiadb in current directory. This can be overridden by environment PASKIA_DB if needed.

Tutorial: From Local Testing to Production

This section walks you through a complete example, from running Paskia locally to protecting a real site in production.

Step 1: Local Testing

For development and testing, run Paskia without any arguments:

paskia

This starts the server on localhost:4401 with passkeys bound to localhost. On first run, Paskia prints a registration link for the Master Admin—click it to register your first passkey.

Step 2: Production Configuration

For a real deployment, configure Paskia with your domain name (rp-id). This enables SSO setup for that domain and any subdomains.

paskia --rp-id=example.com --rp-name="Example Corp" --save

This binds passkeys to the rp-id, allowing them to be used there or on any subdomain of it. The --rp-name is the branding shown in UI and registered with passkeys for everything on your domain (rp id). The --save option stores these settings in the database, so future runs only need paskia --rp-id example.com, of which we will make use of with the systemd config later on.

Step 3: Set Up Caddy

Install Caddy and copy the auth folder to /etc/caddy/auth. Say your current unprotected Caddyfile looks like this:

app.example.com {
    reverse_proxy :3000
}

Add Paskia full site protection:

app.example.com {
    import auth/setup
    handle {
        import auth/require perm=myapp:login
        reverse_proxy :3000
    }
}

Run systemctl reload caddy. Now app.example.com requires the myapp:login permission. Try accessing it and you'll land on a login dialog.

Step 4: Assign Permissions via Admin Panel

1. Go to app.example.com/auth/admin/
2. Create a permission, give it a name and scope myapp:login
3. Assign it to Organization
4. In that organization, assign it to the Administration role

Now you have granted yourself the new permission.

Permission scopes are text identifiers with colons as separators that we can use for permission checks. The myapp: prefix is a convention to namespace permissions per application—you but you can use other forms as you see fit (urlsafe characters, no spaces allowed).

Step 5: Add API Authentication to Your App

Your backend already receives Remote-* headers from Caddy's forward-auth. For frontend API calls, we provide a JS paskia module:

import { apiJson } from 'https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/paskia@latest/dist/paskia.js'

const data = await apiJson('/api/sensitive', { method: 'POST' })

When a 401/403 occurs, the auth dialog appears automatically, and the request retries after authentication.

To protect the API path with a different permission, update your Caddyfile:

app.example.com {
    import auth/setup

    @api path /api/*
    handle @api {
        import auth/require perm=myapp:api
        reverse_proxy :3000
    }

    handle {
        import auth/require perm=myapp:login
        reverse_proxy :3000
    }
}

Create the myapp:api permission in the admin panel, that will be required for all API access. Link to /auth/ for the built-in profile page.

You may also remove the myapp:login protection from the rest of your site paths, unless you wish to keep all your assets behind a login page. Having this as the last entry in your config allows free access to everything not matched by other sections.

    handle {
        reverse_proxy :3000
    }

Step 6: Run Paskia as a Service

Create a system user paskia, install UV on the system, and create a systemd unit:

sudo useradd --system --home-dir /srv/paskia --create-home paskia
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sudo env UV_INSTALL_DIR=/usr/local/bin sh
sudo systemctl edit --force --full paskia@.service

Paste the following and save:

[Unit]
Description=Paskia for %i

[Service]
Type=simple
User=paskia
WorkingDirectory=/srv/paskia
ExecStart=uvx paskia --rp-id=%i

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then enable and start, view output for registration link:

sudo systemctl enable --now [e-mail] && sudo journalctl -u [e-mail] -f -n 30 -o cat

Optional: Dedicated Authentication Site

By default, Paskia serves login dialogs and admin interface at the /auth/ path on each protected site. For a cleaner setup, you can use a dedicated authentication subdomain instead. We assume you have your DNS setup for that domain or a wildcard of all subdomains to current machine.

Configure Paskia with the authentication host:

paskia --rp-id example.com --auth-host=auth.example.com --save

Add a Caddy configuration for the authentication domain:

auth.example.com {
    reverse_proxy :4401
}

Now all authentication happens at auth.example.com instead of /auth/ paths on your apps. No other changes are needed. Your existing protected sites continue to work as before but they just forward to the dedicated site for user profile and other such functionality.

Further Documentation

• Caddy configuration
• Trusted Headers for Backend Apps
• Frontend integration
• Paskia API