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Authentication establishes who is connecting to PawSQL. Authorization then determines which organizations, projects, workspaces, and operations that identity can access. If sign-in succeeds but a resource is missing, investigate authorization before resetting credentials.

Goal

Learn how to authenticate web, IDE, MCP, and API clients and manage credentials and access tokens securely.

Prerequisites

  • A PawSQL account or the credentials issued by your administrator.
  • The service endpoint for the PawSQL environment you connect to.

Authentication by client

Web sign-in

1

Open a trusted endpoint

Verify the domain and TLS certificate.
2

Authenticate

Use the login method shown by the service.
3

Confirm identity

Check the account, organization, and project after sign-in.
4

Confirm authorization

Verify that the required features and workspaces are visible.

Manage access tokens

  • Create separate tokens for IDE, MCP, CI/CD, and temporary testing.
  • Use a name that identifies purpose and owner.
  • Limit scope and lifetime.
  • Store the value immediately in an approved secret manager.
  • Rotate credentials on a defined schedule.
  • Revoke a token as soon as it is no longer needed.
Tokens may be shown in full only once. Never paste them into source code, ordinary configuration files, screenshots, documentation, or build logs.

Credential storage order

  1. Client or operating-system secure credential store.
  2. CI/CD secret or enterprise vault.
  3. Access-restricted environment configuration excluded from version control.
  4. Avoid plaintext command-line arguments because they may appear in shell history or process inspection.

Account hygiene

  • Assign an individual account to each user.
  • Review privileged and inactive accounts regularly.
  • Revoke access when a user changes role or leaves a project.
  • Treat suspected exposure as an incident: revoke first, replace the credential, and review audit records.

Troubleshooting

Expected Result

After sign-in you see your account, organization, and project, and the features and workspaces your role permits are visible.

Verification

Confirm the displayed account, organization, and project match your expectations, and that the required features and workspaces are visible before proceeding.

Next steps

Verify the installation

Install IDE extensions

Configure PawSQL MCP