What is a session?
A session is a unique identifier for a user’s authenticated state within your application. It ties together the user’s identity, authentication factors, and session metadata. Once a user successfully authenticates, Stytch mints a Session object for the user—represented by two tokens:Session represented by tokens
User Session object
Represents an authenticated session for a specific user.
session_token
An opaque token that’s verified via API call.
session_jwt
A signed token that can be locally verified.
Session management
Stytch’s SDKs provide a session management layer that abstracts token rotation, session validation, and more:Check for an active session
Control your application behavior based on whether a user has an active session.
Authenticate a session
Validate session tokens or JWTs before any action that requires authorization.
Hydrate a session
Hydrate the frontend session state from the backend.
Add custom claims
Encode additional information into your session JWTs using custom claims.
Cookies and sessions
Options for cookie configuration and HttpOnly cookies.