Posts made by dan

You want to modify the Two-Factor Login duration in the Tenant Settings, which applies across to SMS and MFA methods.

https://fusionauth.io/docs/get-started/core-concepts/tenants#advanced has more details.

Users who's email is lagged by 30 - 60 seconds , the emailed MFA verification code has expired by the time they receive them. I've done a Zoom meeting with the user and verified they are doing everything correctly, but their email is web mail based and must be from cloud provider that has a really slow system. They probably get the email about 60 seconds of they click send verification code and it always fails to verify.

I can't find anything in settings to change the timeout or searching the documentation. Is there a setting for this somewhere that I could change or could Emailed Verification codes be good for at least 90 seconds?

ported to forum from https://github.com/FusionAuth/fusionauth-issues/issues/3545

Hi folks,

We recently enabled Intelligent MFA for the forum application.

If you don't have MFA set up, you'll be prompted to enable it.

Then, going forward, you'll be prompted for MFA if and only if the authentication is determined to be high risk.

Please contact us if you have feedback.

Here are two scenarios for using the FusionAuth API MCP Server, which is an MCP server that connects over STDIO and can be used to configure a FusionAuth instance.

• Local development — letting an agent configure FusionAuth and recording the steps for later automation
• Production read-only — using an agent to safely query a production instance

Preview Warning: The FusionAuth MCP server is a preview release and may break, change, or be discontinued. It is intended for development and test instances. Never give an MCP client unrestricted access to a production instance.

Prerequisites

• A running FusionAuth instance (local or remote)
• Node.js installed
• An MCP-compatible client (e.g., Claude Desktop)

Scenario 1: Local Development

This lets you configure FusionAuth and record steps to apply to other instances.

• Create a read-write API key. In your local FusionAuth instance, create an API key with the permissions you need. For full configuration work, you may want broad permissions, but always follow the principle of least privilege — for example, if you're only working with applications and themes, grant only those permissions.
• Configure your MCP client. For Claude Desktop on macOS, edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json to add the FusionAuth MCP server. Since you want full configuration access, omit the USE_TOOLS restriction (note: you'll need a model that can handle ~200k tokens):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "fusionauth-mcp-api": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "@fusionauth/mcp-api"
      ],
      "env": {
        "API_KEY_APIKEYAUTH": "<your-read-write-api-key>",
        "API_BASE_URL": "http://localhost:9011"
      }
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop after saving.

• Verify the connection. Open Claude Desktop and ask:

"Which tools do you have access to?"

You should see a list of all FusionAuth API tools (300+).

• Configure FusionAuth using natural language. Now you can describe what you want in plain English. For example:

"Set up a custom registration form for the Pied Piper application. Require email address and password, but allow first name and favorite color to be optional. Put them all on one page."

Or:

"Add a user with an email address of test@example.com and a password of password."

The agent will make the appropriate API calls on your behalf.

• Export your configuration for automation. Once you've configured things the way you want, ask the agent to export the configuration so you can turn it into repeatable scripts:

"Please export the configuration for the Pied Piper application to a kickstart file."

"Export the current tenant configuration as a Terraform file."

This gives you a reproducible artifact you can commit to source control or use in CI/CD pipelines.

You can reduce tool scope. If you only need to work with specific operations (e.g., no deletes), you can reduce the tool list to improve performance and limit risk:

"env": {
  "API_KEY_APIKEYAUTH": "<your-api-key>",
  "API_BASE_URL": "http://localhost:9011",
  "USE_TOOLS": "create,update,retrieve,search,other"
}

This omits the delete APIs and reduces the tool list by ~20%.

Scenario 2: Production Read-Only Queries with an Agent

The security model of this approach consists of three layers: the instance you connect to, the tool categories you expose, and the permissions on the API key itself. Combining a read-only API key with USE_TOOLS="retrieve,search" gives you defense in depth for production queries.

• Create a read-only API key. In your production FusionAuth instance, create an API key scoped to read-only operations only. This is the most important security step — the API key defines the ceiling of what the agent can do.
• Configure your MCP client with read-only tools. Edit your MCP client config to point at your production instance and restrict tools to retrieve and search only:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "fusionauth-mcp-api-prod": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "@fusionauth/mcp-api"
      ],
      "env": {
        "API_KEY_APIKEYAUTH": "<your-read-only-api-key>",
        "API_BASE_URL": "https://your-production-fusionauth-instance.com",
        "USE_TOOLS": "retrieve,search"
      }
    }
  }
}

Setting USE_TOOLS="retrieve,search" reduces the tool list by 66% and ensures the agent cannot create, update, patch, or delete anything. This is a second layer of defense.

• Verify read-only access. Ask the agent:

"Which tools do you have access to?"

Confirm that only retrieve and search tools are listed — no create, update, delete, or patch tools should appear.

• Query production data. You can now safely ask questions like:

  • "Is PKCE enforced for all my applications?"
  • "How many users do I have in my FusionAuth instance?"
  • "How many FusionAuth applications do I have?"

The agent will use the read-only API tools to answer your questions without modifying anything.

how would I use the FusionAuth MCP server to allow an agent to interact with FusionAuth?

Note that as of release 1.68.0 (released in late Jun 2026), there is a mfa_deleter role that can remove MFA from a user.

Please see the release notes for more details.

Since we can’t store API keys in code,

FYI, with the release of 1.64.0, you now can store secrets elsewhere and have lambdas retrieve them.

See the documentation for more details.

As of 1.62.0, FusionAuth supports pre-verification of emails and phone numbers.

More details:

https://fusionauth.io/docs/lifecycle/manage-users/verification/identity-pre-verification-using-email

https://fusionauth.io/docs/lifecycle/manage-users/verification/identity-pre-verification-using-phone

You have a couple of options.

• If you use the hosted login pages/authorization code grant, disabling all grants in the application settings page will prevent people from logging in.
• If you use the login API and have customer-based API keys, you could turn on the 'require API key for login API' and then disable the customer's API key.
• If you have the Enterprise plan, you could set up an IP ACL for a unroutable IP range.

However, the easiest way to make sure an application cannot be logged into is to deactivate the application.

Is there a way to disable logging into an application without disabling/deleting it?

Per https://github.com/FusionAuth/fusionauth-issues/issues/1810 I'm not clear what my options are.

Lots of options!

• Self-service password recovery — SMS or Email based forgot password flows out of the box, with hosted pages that require no custom UI. If a user's login ID is a phone number, the reset is delivered via SMS automatically.
• API-driven recovery — The full forgot password flow is triggerable via POST /api/user/forgot-password with an email, phone, or username as the login ID, giving teams complete control over the UI and recovery experience.
• Admin and support-assisted recovery — Support staff can trigger resets or force password changes directly from the admin UI, no email required.
• Admins can also remove MFA methods directly from the user record.
• MFA recovery — Recovery codes generated at MFA enrollment let users bypass a lost second factor.
• Self-service MFA configuration — Users can add, remove, and manage their own MFA methods (TOTP, SMS, email) from a hosted self-service account page without any admin involvement. Removing a method requires completing an MFA challenge first, which prevents unauthorized removal. If an admin removes a user's MFA method and the tenant or application policy is set to Required, the user will be prompted to set up MFA again on next login.
• Webhooks and event-driven recovery — FusionAuth fires events like user.login.failed and user.password.reset that your backend can listen to and act on, enabling custom recovery logic, audit trails, and downstream notifications.
• Account linking and IdP recovery — For users who log in via a social or enterprise IdP, FusionAuth can be configured to link that identity to a FusionAuth user record. If the IdP connection is the issue, the user can still go through the standard forgot password flow as long as an phone number or email is on their account, so recovery isn't solely dependent on the IdP being available.

What are account recovery options available with FusionAuth?

You want to use search parameters like those outlined in this sample script.

• use a key limited to POST on /api/user/search
• set accurateTotal on the request
• set numberOfResults to 1 on the request

In the response, look at the total field.

This will let you get exact numbers while reducing load on your instance.

How can I get an exact number of users with some attributes? I'm using elasticsearch.

Beginning in version 1.65.0, FusionAuth offers Complete Registration. Full docs here.

How this would work:

• enable a registration form for the application your users are logging into
• select certain attributes as required. If you are using a basic form, you could select 'birth date'. If you are using an advanced form, you can select whatever profile attributes you need
• set the Registration mode to Complete registration. This setting means that users cannot self-register, but can complete missing information from an existing registration.
• save the application

Now, your admin user can create a user with a minimal amount of data (perhaps just an email address).

The user will, at first login, be prompted to fill out their profile data, including all fields you've marked required.

This is not full progressive registration, but can be useful in certain circumstances.

How can I collect additional profile attributes at login after a user has been created and registered?

I'm using the hosted login pages. My admin user creates an account, but I want to collect other profile attributes from the user afterwards.

@kevin-doran This is a great question to ask FusionAuth support.

Have you opened a ticket?

Thank you for letting us know.

This is an open issue. To see when this is resolved, you can follow along with the github issue here: https://github.com/FusionAuth/fusionauth-issues/issues/3439

The cleanest way to do it is with asymmetric JWT verification plus a bounded offline grace period.** Here's the pattern.

FusionAuth signs JWTs with a private key it holds. The matching public key is published at the JWKS endpoint (/.well-known/jwks.json). Your mobile app — or any resource server — can verify a token's signature locally, with zero network calls, as long as it has that public key. You can even bundle the public key with the application and avoid the retrieving it.

That's the property that makes offline auth possible. You're not asking "is this token still good?" over the wire; you're asking "did FusionAuth sign this, and has it expired?" using math the device can do on its own.

See JWT signing configuration and the JWKS endpoint docs.

The Flow

1. First login (online, required). The user authenticates against FusionAuth via OAuth with the offline_access scope, or via the Login API with loginId + password + applicationId. You get back two things:

• A short-lived access token (signed JWT, RS256, EdDSA, or ES256)
• A long-lived refresh token (opaque, default 30 days, configurable per tenant or application)

Refresh token details are in the refresh token settings docs.

2. Cache the JWKS on the device. Fetch /.well-known/jwks.json once and store it. You'll match incoming tokens to the right key using the kid in the JWT header. For fully air-gapped scenarios, you can bundle the JWKS into the app at build time — see the air-gapping article.

3. Online operation. The app uses the access token for API calls. When it expires, the app calls the Refresh a JWT API with the refresh token to mint a new access token.

4. Offline operation. The app validates the cached access token locally:

• Find the key in the JWKS where kid matches the JWT header
• Verify the signature with that public key
• Check exp, iss, aud, and any custom claims you care about

If the token is past exp but the device is offline, allow a bounded grace period (e.g., 24 hours past expiration). After that, degrade functionality until the device reconnects and refreshes. For instance, you could allow read operations but nothing that changes data.

5. On reconnect. Refresh immediately. If the refresh token has been revoked server-side, the call will fail and the user must re-authenticate.

Token lifetime tuning

This is where you make your security/availability tradeoff explicit. FusionAuth lets you tune both lifetimes per tenant or per application:

• Access token TTL (ttl_seconds set this short for online use (5–15 minutes is typical), but if you want longer offline windows without the grace-period workaround, you can extend it. Whatever you pick is the maximum revocation lag for compromised tokens.
• Refresh token duration: default is ~30 days. Use a Sliding Window with Maximum Lifetime policy if you want active devices to keep working but inactive ones to expire automatically.
• One-Time Use refresh tokens: rotates the token value on every refresh. Strongly recommended — if a refresh token is stolen and used, the legitimate device's next refresh will fail and the theft is detected.

What FusionAuth gives you for revocation

Refresh tokens can be revoked automatically on password change, MFA enrollment, or any action that prevents login. You can also call the Revoke Refresh Tokens API directly. The catch: revocation only takes effect the next time the device tries to refresh. Already-issued access tokens remain valid until their exp.

Tradeoffs you're signing up for

Be honest with yourself about this approach. These aren't FusionAuth limitations, they're inherent to offline auth:

• Delayed revocation. A stolen device retains access until the access token expires and the offline grace period elapses. Shorter access token TTLs mean faster revocation but more refresh traffic and shorter offline windows. Pick where on that curve you want to sit.
• Clock trust. Offline exp checks rely on the device clock, which the user controls. If that matters for your threat model, store a "last known server time" on each refresh and refuse to validate tokens if the clock has moved backward.
• Stale claims. If a user's roles or permissions change, the old claims persist in the cached token until the next refresh. Acceptable for most apps, not for high-stakes authorization.
• Local credential storage. If you want users to "log in" while offline (PIN/biometric to unlock the cached session), you're storing something derivable from their credential on the device. Use the platform secure storage (iOS Keychain, Android Keystore) and a slow KDF like Argon2id for any password-derived material.
• Key rotation. If you bundle JWKS into the app, you have to ship app updates ahead of key rotations (or plan to create a bunch of keys ahead of time). If you fetch JWKS dynamically, you need a cache strategy and a fallback when the cache is stale and the network is down.
• MFA degrades offline. Push and SMS-based factors require connectivity. Offline auth typically falls back to device-bound factors (the refresh token + a local PIN/biometric), which is different than your online MFA flow. Decide whether that's acceptable.

Practical starting point

Here's an example of the configuration:

• Access token TTL: 15 minutes
• Refresh token: 30 days, sliding window, one-time use
• Offline grace period (app-enforced): 24 hours past exp
• JWKS: fetched on first launch, refreshed weekly when online, with a bundled fallback
• Mandatory online check-in: every 7 days (refuse to operate offline beyond this)

Tighten the numbers for higher-sensitivity apps, loosen them for field-work apps where availability matters more than instant revocation.

Some further reading for you:

• Building a Secure JWT
• Revoking JWTs
• Token storage best practices
• Air-gapping FusionAuth

The short version: FusionAuth gives you all the primitives:

• asymmetric signing
• JWKS
• configurable lifetimes
• refresh token revocation

The offline policy is yours to design, and the design is mostly about choosing how much revocation lag you can tolerate in exchange for how much offline runway your users need.

I'm building a mobile app that needs to work in places with spotty or no connectivity (think field workers, transit, rural areas).

Can I use FusionAuth as my central identity provider while still letting users authenticate when the device is offline?