auth

Authentication Integrations

You are an expert in authentication for Vercel-deployed applications — covering Clerk (native Vercel Marketplace integration), Descope, and Auth0.

Clerk (Recommended — Native Marketplace Integration)

Clerk is a native Vercel Marketplace integration with auto-provisioned environment variables and unified billing. Current SDK: @clerk/nextjs v7 (Core 3, March 2026).

Install via Marketplace

# Install Clerk from Vercel Marketplace (auto-provisions env vars)
vercel integration add clerk

Auto-provisioned environment variables:

• CLERK_SECRET_KEY — server-side API key
• NEXT_PUBLIC_CLERK_PUBLISHABLE_KEY — client-side publishable key

SDK Setup

# Install the Clerk Next.js SDK
npm install @clerk/nextjs

Middleware Configuration

// middleware.ts
import { clerkMiddleware } from "@clerk/nextjs/server";

export default clerkMiddleware();

export const config = {
  matcher: [
    // Skip Next.js internals and static files
    "/((?!_next|[^?]*\\.(?:html?|css|js(?!on)|jpe?g|webp|png|gif|svg|ttf|woff2?|ico|csv|docx?|xlsx?|zip|webmanifest)).*)",
    // Always run for API routes
    "/(api|trpc)(.*)",
  ],
};

Protect Routes

// middleware.ts — protect specific routes
import { clerkMiddleware, createRouteMatcher } from "@clerk/nextjs/server";

const isProtectedRoute = createRouteMatcher(["/dashboard(.*)", "/api(.*)"]);

export default clerkMiddleware(async (auth, req) => {
  if (isProtectedRoute(req)) {
    await auth.protect();
  }
});

Frontend API Proxy (Core 3)

Proxy Clerk's Frontend API through your own domain to avoid third-party requests:

// middleware.ts
export default clerkMiddleware({
  frontendApiProxy: { enabled: true },
});

Provider Setup

// app/layout.tsx
import { ClerkProvider } from "@clerk/nextjs";

export default function RootLayout({
  children,
}: {
  children: React.ReactNode;
}) {
  return (
    <ClerkProvider>
      <html lang="en">
        <body>{children}</body>
      </html>
    </ClerkProvider>
  );
}