Logging in with email & password

Signing in

The base login: email + password, on a browser this IAM already recognises, with no second factor enrolled (the LE2 path). Whether MFA or a device challenge applies is not something the client can check beforehand — the login response itself reveals the branch.

POST /v1/auth/login with { identifier: <email>, password } → known device + no MFA: accessToken + refresh cookie (amr: [pwd])
Other answers: { challengeToken, challenge, remaining } → scenario 11 / 12 / 13 · { mfaRequired, mfaToken } (legacy shape) → scenario 12

POST/v1/auth/loginpublicLog in (identifier + password)

Submit { identifier, password } where identifier is the email ({ email } is still accepted as a deprecated alias and normalised server-side). ON A RECOGNISED BROWSER SEND ONLY { password }: with a device_token cookie present identifier is optional and the account is resolved from the trusted device, which is what lets the “Welcome back” screen (scenario 8) avoid asking for an identifier it can only display masked. No identifier AND no usable cookie is a uniform 401, never a 422 “identifier is required” — that message would itself confirm the cookie was rejected. The account lockout still applies, keyed on the RESOLVED identifier. Wrong credentials, an unverified credential, or an inactive account all return a uniform 401 invalid_credentials — the cause is never disclosed, and the password path spends the same argon2 work either way so latency does not leak account existence. The credential you type must itself be VERIFIED. clientId is reserved and currently rejected (422). No active tenant membership → 403; multiple tenants → the DEFAULT is picked (use switch-tenant, scenario 20).

⛓ Needs an out-of-band value?

Request body (JSON)

ℹ︎Field guide — what each value means & where it comes from4 fields

Public, unauthenticated login. No Authorization header; send only the JSON body below. Throttled per credential/IP; response is no-store. The answer is one of three shapes — tokens, a challenge chain, or the legacy MFA challenge — and which one you get is NOT checkable beforehand (there is no pre-login MFA-status endpoint, by anti-enumeration design). Before the credential is examined at all, the active LOGIN policy is checked: if the channel this attempt uses is off, the answer is 403 login_method_disabled for a right and a wrong password alike (which discloses nothing — GET /v1/auth/login-policy publishes the same fact unauthenticated). Read that policy first in scenario 7.

identifierbodystringconditionalyou choose

The credential being authenticated: an email OR an E.164 phone number. The SHAPE decides the lookup, not a mode flag — anything matching ^\+[1-9]\d{6,14}$ is resolved by phone, anything else as an email — so a client never has to know which kind of account it is addressing. The credential you type must itself be VERIFIED (an email login needs a verified email, a phone login a verified phone). OPTIONAL ON A RECOGNISED DEVICE: when the body carries no identifier and a valid device_token cookie is presented, the account is resolved from the trusted device and its primary channel is used. That is what lets the “Welcome back” screen (scenario 8) ask for nothing but a password — it only ever had a MASKED identifier to show, and could not otherwise complete the login it had just offered. It grants nothing: the password is still required, and a missing / garbage / expired / revoked cookie with no identifier answers the SAME uniform 401 invalid_credentials as a wrong password (never a 422 “identifier is required”, which would itself confirm the cookie was rejected). An explicit identifier always takes precedence.

emailbodystringconditionalyou choose

DEPRECATED ALIAS for identifier, still accepted and normalised server-side so existing clients keep working. Send identifier in new integrations. Valid email, at most 320 chars.

clientIdbodystringoptionalyou choose

RESERVED and currently REJECTED with 422. The field exists so per-app tokens can land later without a route change — leave it out.

passwordbodystringrequiredyou choose

The account password the user types. 1-1024 chars. Verified against the stored credential; wrong password yields a uniform invalid_credentials 401.

→ POST https://api.kerja.team/v1/auth/login

↩︎Response guide — what comes back & what each value means16 fields

200 OK, { data } envelope, Cache-Control: no-store. THREE possible shapes, and the login response itself is the only way to learn which branch applies (there is no pre-login MFA-status endpoint, by anti-enumeration design): (1) tokens — nothing more to prove; (2) a CHALLENGE CHAIN { challengeToken, challenge, remaining } when a device and/or MFA hop is pending, continued at POST /v1/auth/login/challenge/verify; (3) the LEGACY single-hop { mfaRequired, method, phoneHint, mfaToken } when DEVICE_TRUST_ENABLED is off. Only the token branch sets Set-Cookie: refresh_token.

data.accessTokenstringconditional

Non-MFA branch only (MFA disabled). The signed JWT access token; the client sends it as Authorization: Bearer for subsequent calls.

data.tokenTypestringconditional

Non-MFA branch only. Token scheme to use in the Authorization header.

Bearer — Send the accessToken as 'Authorization: Bearer <accessToken>'.

data.expiresInnumberconditional

Non-MFA branch only. Access-token TTL in seconds (ACCESS_TOKEN_TTL_SECONDS, default 600). Client should refresh before it elapses.

data.user.idstringconditional

Non-MFA branch only. The authenticated user's unique id.

data.user.emailstringconditional

Non-MFA branch only. The authenticated user's email.

data.user.displayNamestringconditional

Non-MFA branch only. Human-readable display name for the user, e.g. for UI greeting.

data.user.tenantIdstringconditional

Non-MFA branch only. The selected tenant for this session; if the user has multiple tenants, the default membership is chosen.

data.challengeTokenstringconditional

CHALLENGE branch only. The token that carries the ordered remaining plan and the accumulated amr — the server keeps no per-chain state. Copy it into POST /v1/auth/login/challenge/verify (or .../resend). Short-lived: LOGIN_CHALLENGE_TTL_SECONDS, default 300s.

data.challenge.typeenumconditional

CHALLENGE branch only. Which factor the first hop collects. A device hop always comes before an MFA hop, so the MFA hint is never leaked to an unrecognised machine.

device_email_code — New browser, email-mode account (LN2) — a code was emailed. Continue at scenario 11.
device_phone_otp — New browser, phone-mode account (LN1) — an OTP went out on the account's primary channel.
mfa_phone_otp — An enrolled phone-OTP second factor (LE3) — the OTP is sent as the challenge is issued. A recognised device never skips this hop.
mfa_totp — An enrolled authenticator app — nothing is sent; the code comes from the app, so no resend applies.

data.challenge.hintstringconditional

CHALLENGE branch only. The masked destination the code went to (b••••@example.com, +••••••6789) — show it so the user knows which inbox or handset to check.

data.challenge.expiresInnumberconditional

CHALLENGE branch only. Seconds until this hop expires; when it lapses, start again at login.

data.remainingnumberconditional

CHALLENGE branch only. How many hops are still to clear, counting this one: 1 for a lone device or MFA challenge, 2 for the new-device-plus-MFA chain (LN3, scenario 13).

data.methodenumconditional

LEGACY MFA branch only. Which second factor to collect.

phone_otp — Send/resend the OTP with POST /v1/auth/mfa/otp/request, then verify. phone_otp is the method advertised when both are confirmed.
totp — Read the code from the authenticator app — there is nothing to send, so skip the otp/request step.

data.phoneHintstringconditional

LEGACY MFA branch, phone_otp only. The masked destination the second-factor OTP will go to.

data.mfaRequiredbooleanconditional

MFA branch only (MFA enabled). Signals no token was issued and the caller must complete the MFA challenge via POST /v1/auth/mfa/verify (§3.8).

true — MFA challenge pending; proceed to /v1/auth/mfa/verify carrying mfaToken. No access token or refresh cookie issued yet.

data.mfaTokenstringconditional

MFA branch only. A single-purpose JWT (~5 min TTL), NOT an access token. The client copies it into the follow-up MFA verify (and OTP request) calls to complete login.