@aauth/protocol

The AAuth wire format, on its own. Header build/parse, access_mode planning, protocol constants, and unverified JWT decoding. No I/O, no crypto.

Tracks draft-hardt-oauth-aauth-protocol-11.

One runtime dependency: @hellocoop/httpsig, imported for its RFC 8941 structured field parser (@hellocoop/httpsig/structured-fields). AAuth-Requirement is a Dictionary and AAuth-Capabilities is a List of Tokens, and every consumer of this package signs its requests with @hellocoop/httpsig anyway — so the parser is already installed, and a second implementation of the same grammar is a second place for the quoting and escaping rules to be got wrong.

npm install @aauth/protocol

AAuth-Requirement

import { parseRequirementHeader, buildRequirementHeader, UnsupportedRequirementError }
  from '@aauth/protocol'

// resource side
res.setHeader('AAuth-Requirement', buildRequirementHeader({
  requirement: 'auth-token',
  resourceToken,
}))

// agent side
try {
  const challenge = parseRequirementHeader(res.headers.get('AAuth-Requirement')!)
} catch (e) {
  if (e instanceof UnsupportedRequirementError) {
    // MUST NOT treat the response as satisfiable. Surface e.value to the caller.
  }
}

Recognized values: agent-token, person-token, auth-token, approval, interaction, clarification, claims. Anything else throws UnsupportedRequirementError, carrying the raw value. For a 202 the caller MAY keep polling Location in case a later response carries a value it knows.

requirement=auth-token requires a resource-token parameter and requirement=interaction requires both url and code; a header missing one is malformed and throws a plain Error. Unknown parameters are ignored.

AAuth-Capabilities

buildCapabilitiesHeader(['interaction', 'clarification'])  // "interaction, clarification"
parseCapabilitiesHeader('interaction, quantum-consent')    // ["interaction"]

Parsing filters unrecognized values and never throws — recipients MUST ignore what they do not recognize. Building does not filter: an agent unions its own capabilities with the ones its PS reports, which may be newer than this library.

An absent header is not an empty one. When the header is absent, recipients MUST NOT assume any capabilities.

access_mode

access_mode in /.well-known/aauth-resource.json is advisory — the runtime AAuth-Requirement is authoritative. planAccessMode gives an agent one of three answers and never throws.

const plan = planAccessMode(metadata.access_mode, { hasPersonServer: false })

switch (plan.kind) {
  case 'undeclared':     // absent or unrecognized — call the resource anyway
  case 'satisfiable':    // plan.mode is reachable with this setup
  case 'unsatisfiable':  // skip the resource, show plan.reason
}

Unrecognized values are undeclared, not errors: the value space is the AAuth Access Mode Value Registry, and an agent that stops on an unknown value breaks every time a value is registered.

unsatisfiable comes from an agent token with no ps claim. Three of the five modes reach a person server, and without one none of them can complete:

| Mode | No person server | Why | | --- | --- | --- | | agent-token | satisfiable | Identity only; no PS in the flow. | | session-token | satisfiable | Resource-managed; the resource issues its own credential. | | person-token | unsatisfiable | The agent must sign with a person token, which only a PS issues. | | auth-token | unsatisfiable | The resource token is exchanged for an auth token at the PS. | | per-call | unsatisfiable | Terminates in an auth token — the grant is the r3_per_call claim. |

Constants

TOKEN_TYP (the four typ values), DWK (the four well-known key documents), SIGNING_ALG — Ed25519, fully specified per RFC 9864. The polymorphic EdDSA MUST NOT be used.

JWT decoding

decodeJwtHeader and decodeJwtPayload parse a token's segments and throw on anything malformed. No signature verification. They prove nothing; never make a trust decision on their output.

Not here

AAuth-Mission was removed in -11, along with its IANA registration. A mission reaches a resource only inside a PS-issued token, as the mission_s256 claim. There are no mission header helpers in this package and there will not be.

License

MIT