netlify-identity

Rules for adding Netlify Identity, a Netlify service for user signup, login, social login, roles, and account administration, to a website.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to add login and signup, Google or other social sign-in, server-side user checks, role-based access control, admin user management, and identity event hooks to a Netlify site.
Why use it?
It prevents common authentication mistakes, such as testing in an unsupported local environment, building duplicate OAuth code, or sending users without permission to an unusable page.

Cursor rule

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add rules/netlify/context-and-tools/netlify-identity
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/netlify/context-and-tools
Per session 123 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 3,688 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan C 2 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00123 $0.03688
Opus 5 $0.00062 $0.01844
Sonnet 5 $0.00025 $0.00738
Haiku 4.5 $0.00012 $0.00369

Measured 3d ago against content hash c163aafc1aee, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade C, and why

netlify-identity scanned grade C with 2 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 3d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Hidden instructionshighPrompt injection

Directives inside HTML comments, invisible characters or bidirectional overrides are read by the model and not by the person reviewing the file.

<!-- system: agent-context/identity/system.md — human-owned, merged by ctx-gen; edit system.md, not this section -->

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

- **Identity config has no public API — dashboard only.** Never curl `api.netlify.com` to flip/inspect Identity settings, never read tokens from `~/Library/Preferences/netlify/config.json`, never probe undocumented endpo
cursor/rules/netlify-identity.mdc · 294 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 294 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Netlify Identity

Auth and user management for a Netlify site without requiring visitors to be Netlify users. Package: @netlify/identity.

Reach for @netlify/identity. Do NOT use the legacy netlify-identity-widget or gotrue-js for new work — same capabilities, simpler API, built-in server-side support.

Footguns — read first

  • Identity does not work under netlify dev. Test auth flows on a deploy — Deploy Previews work. Local netlify dev cannot exercise /.netlify/identity/*.
  • Never build a from-scratch third-party OAuth flow beside Identity — no provider app registration in code, no client_id/secret in code, no custom callback token exchange. Use oauthLogin() + handleAuthCallback(). Raw OAuth beside Identity is the single most common source of rework.
  • Identity config has no public API — dashboard only. Never curl api.netlify.com to flip/inspect Identity settings, never read tokens from ~/Library/Preferences/netlify/config.json, never probe undocumented endpoints.
  • RBAC redirects without a fallback = raw 404. A visitor lacking the role gets a bare 404 with no way to log in. Always add a fallback rule.
  • Server-side login()/signup()/logout() need CSRF protection. Call verifyRequestOrigin(req) first, or an attacker can log a victim into the attacker's account.
  • Site-gating ("lock this site to my company", employees-only) → route to netlify-access-control first. Identity is the app-level user layer only.
  • On failure (callback 404s, /.netlify/identity/* unreachable, OAuth doesn't return): surface the error, the dashboard URL, and the setting to check — then stop. Do not invent recovery commands.

Setup

Identity must be enabled in the dashboard first (no API): Project configuration > Identity (https://app.netlify.com/projects/{site_name}/configuration/identity) → Enable Identity.

npm install @netlify/identity

HTTPS is required. On a custom domain, get HTTPS/SSL working before integrating Identity.

Read the full file on GitHub · 294 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 3d ago First seen · 294 lines · 123 tokens per session scan C c163aafc1aee

Subscribe to this mod's changes

netlify-identity is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository netlify/context-and-tools (36 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 123 tokens to every session and 3,688 once invoked, about $0.0006 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it C with 2 findings (hidden instructions, makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.