August 2021 Summaries

Today, we're open sourcing prom-authzed-proxy! prom-authzed-proxy is a proxy for Prometheus that authorizes the request's Bearer Token with Authzed and enforces a label in a PromQL query. The proxy was built to have absolutely no assumptions about the schema of the Permission System or the metrics in Prometheus! It uses the contents of the Bearer Token as the Subject ID and a query parameter specified in the proxy's flag as the Object ID, and returns an HTTP 403 if the permissions check fails. This allows developers to securely query Prometheus while maintaining their application's permissions requirements. The open-sourcing of prom-authzed-proxy is part of our efforts to maintain a single observability stack for both internal and external usage, and to make SaaS products Cloud Native.

Today, Authzed is announcing the availability of API latency metrics in its dashboard, allowing users to view performance data and correlate it with their own applications. This move aims to improve transparency and observability for Authzed users, moving beyond internal best practices to provide a more open approach. The new feature will initially be available for checking API request latencies, with plans to expand to other metrics in the future. By exposing this data, Authzed hopes to empower its users to better understand and optimize their application's performance, fostering a more collaborative relationship between developers and Authzed.

The Authzed Product Update is a monthly newsletter that provides an overview of new features and updates to the Authzed platform. The update includes announcements about new schema language, improved Playground functionality, website design changes, and the release of Java and NodeJS clients for developers using JVM languages or TypeScript. Additionally, the update highlights various company events and activities such as developer happy hours, co-hosted events, and product launches. The newsletter also features a section called "Entropy from #random" which shares humorous anecdotes about the team's personal experiences with technology, including laptop fan issues and trending topics like Mac & Cheese Ice Cream.