1. Introduction
Corbado Connect allows you to seamlessly integrate passkey-first authentication into your existing Identity Provider (IdP) or authentication system. This approach allows you to offer your users a secure, convenient, and passwordless login experience while leveraging your current user management infrastructure. You can enhance your security and user experience without performing a complex migration or replacing your established authentication stack. This guide provides a generic approach to integrating Corbado Connect with any authentication system, whether it’s:- A custom-built authentication solution
- A third-party Identity Provider (IdP)
- An authentication framework or library
2. How it Works: Recommended User Journey
Integrating Corbado Connect means layering passkey functionality on top of your existing system. Most enterprise clients already have a robust, often multi-step, sign-up process for account creation. Therefore, we recommend leaving your classic sign-up flow untouched and introducing passkeys after the user has successfully authenticated. This post-login enrollment strategy ensures that a stable user identity (e.g. UUID) exists and an authenticated session is active — both are prerequisites for securely generating the tokens required for passkey operations. It also provides a natural path for your existing users to adopt passkeys. Once a user has created a passkey, they can use it to login without passwords. For a deep dive into the data and best practices behind this recommendation, see our blog post on passkey creation best practices. Here is a visual overview of the recommended user journey, outlining each step where you need to implement Corbado Connect using our Corbado Web UI Components: A key part of this flow is that after any successful login (both for passkey and non-passkey logins), the application should always redirect to a page hosting the CorbadoConnectAppend component. This ensures every authenticated user is consistently offered the chance to enroll a passkey.Rule: Always redirect to the append flow after loginThis strategy is crucial for maximizing passkey adoption. The CorbadoConnectAppend component’s built-in Passkey Intelligence is designed to handle multiple scenarios. For example, after a cross-device authentication (CDA or “hybrid login”), the user has successfully logged in, but their new device doesn’t have a passkey stored locally. Redirecting them to the append flow provides the perfect, low-friction opportunity to create one, improving their future login experience on that device.