How JWT Tokens Carry Identity and Permissions Across Microservices

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In microservice architectures, every request requires context about who is making it and what they are allowed to do, which is handled through JWT access tokens created at login. A User Profiles Service issues these tokens via two endpoints — one returning a full login response and another returning only a Bearer token for callers that already have user context. Before generating a token, the service verifies the user's password, resolves their relationships to projects, accounts, and organizations, and retrieves permissions from a dedicated permissions service. The resulting JWT payload contains not just a user ID but a full security context including project, account, organization, group, and per-service permission mappings. This graph-like linking model ensures that authorization decisions across services are based on verified, structured context rather than raw request headers.

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