Clerk Backend APIs

Overview

Use this skill for Clerk authentication in backend services, API servers, workers, and server-to-server integrations. The key responsibilities are authenticating incoming requests, enforcing authorization on server resources, safely using the Backend API, and making cross-origin token behavior explicit.

Prefer official Clerk SDKs and middleware when available. When the target runtime lacks a first-class Clerk framework SDK, use Clerk-documented token verification and Backend API patterns rather than ad hoc JWT parsing.

Backend Integration Model

The server flow is language-independent: