Clerk Auth Config Generator

Clerk is a drop-in authentication and user management service. It handles sign-up, sign-in, password resets, social OAuth, MFA, session management, and user profiles — so you don't have to build any of that from scratch. It integrates natively with Next.js App Router, Remix, and Astro via framework-specific SDKs.

The middleware runs on every request before your route handler executes. It uses Clerk's clerkMiddleware() to check if a user is authenticated. For routes you mark as protected (using createRouteMatcher), it calls auth.protect() which redirects unauthenticated users to the sign-in page automatically. Public routes skip the auth check entirely.

Add the route pattern to the protected routes list (e.g. /dashboard(.*) to protect /dashboard and all sub-paths). For page-level protection, you can also use auth().protect() inside a Server Component or getAuth() inside a Route Handler. The middleware approach is recommended for consistent protection across all routes without per-page code.

Social providers (Google, GitHub, etc.) are configured in the Clerk Dashboard under User & Authentication → Social Connections. You select which providers to enable, provide the OAuth app credentials (Client ID and Secret from the provider's developer console), and Clerk handles all the OAuth flow, token exchange, and user creation automatically.

Go to dashboard.clerk.com, create a new application, and find your Publishable Key and Secret Key in the API Keys section. The Publishable Key is safe to expose in client-side code (it's prefixed pk_). The Secret Key must never be exposed — keep it only in server-side environment variables.

In Next.js App Router, Clerk uses a middleware.ts file to intercept requests and a ClerkProvider wrapper in your root layout. In Remix, the rootAuthLoader wraps your root loader and ClerkApp wraps your root component. Both approaches achieve the same result: server-side auth checks with client-side auth state propagation, but the integration points differ to match each framework's conventions.