Clerk Observability

Overview

Implement monitoring, logging, and observability for Clerk authentication. Covers structured auth logging, middleware performance tracking, webhook event monitoring, Sentry integration, and health check endpoints.

Prerequisites

• Clerk integration working
• Monitoring platform (Sentry, DataDog, or Pino logger at minimum)
• Logging infrastructure (structured JSON logs recommended)

Instructions

Step 1: Structured Authentication Event Logging

// lib/auth-logger.ts
import pino from 'pino'

const logger = pino({
  level: process.env.LOG_LEVEL || 'info',
  transport: process.env.NODE_ENV === 'development' ? { target: 'pino-pretty' } : undefined,
})

export function logAuthEvent(event: {
  type: 'sign_in' | 'sign_out' | 'sign_up' | 'permission_denied' | 'session_expired'
  userId?: string | null
  orgId?: string | null
  path: string
  metadata?: Record<string, any>
}) {
  logger.info({
    category: 'auth',
    ...event,
    timestamp: new Date().toISOString(),
  })
}

export function logAuthError(error: Error, context: { userId?: string; path: string }) {
  logger.error({
    category: 'auth',
    error: error.message,
    stack: error.stack,
    ...context,
    timestamp: new Date().toISOString(),
  })
}

Step 2: Middleware Performance Monitoring

// middleware.ts
import { clerkMiddleware, createRouteMatcher } from '@clerk/nextjs/server'

const isPublicRoute = createRouteMatcher(['/', '/sign-in(.*)', '/sign-up(.*)'])

export default clerkMiddleware(async (auth, req) => {
  const start = Date.now()

  if (!isPublicRoute(req)) {
    await auth.protect()
  }

  const duration = Date.now() - start
  const { userId } = await auth()

  // Log slow auth checks
  if (duration > 100) {
    console.warn(`[Auth Perf] ${req.nextUrl.pathname} took ${duration}ms`, {
      userId: userId || 'anonymous',
      method: req.method,
    })
  }

  // Add timing header for debugging
  const response = new Response(null, { status: 200 })
  response.headers.set('X-Auth-Duration', `${duration}ms`)
})

Step 3: Webhook Event Tracking

// app/api/webhooks/clerk/route.ts
import { logAuthEvent } from '@/lib/auth-logger'

async function handleWebhookEvent(evt: WebhookEvent) {
  const startTime = Date.now()

  // Track webhook processing metrics
  const metrics = {
    eventType: evt.type,
    receivedAt: new Date().toISOString(),
    processingTimeMs: 0,
  }

  switch (evt.type) {
    case 'user.created':
      logAuthEvent({
        type: 'sign_up',
        userId: evt.data.id,
        path: '/webhooks/clerk',
        metadata: { email: evt.data.email_addresses[0]?.email_address },
      })
      await db.user.create({ data: { clerkId: evt.data.id } })
      break

    case 'session.created':
      logAuthEvent({
        type: 'sign_in',
        userId: evt.data.user_id,
        path: '/webhooks/clerk',
      })
      break

    case 'session.ended':
      logAuthEvent({
        type: 'sign_out',
        userId: evt.data.user_id,
        path: '/webhooks/clerk',
      })
      break
  }

  metrics.processingTimeMs = Date.now() - startTime

  // Alert on slow webhook processing
  if (metrics.processingTimeMs > 5000) {
    console.error('[Webhook] Slow processing:', metrics)
  }

  return Response.json({ received: true })
}

Step 4: Sentry Error Tracking Integration

// lib/sentry-clerk.ts
import * as Sentry from '@sentry/nextjs'
import { auth, currentUser } from '@clerk/nextjs/server'

export async function initSentryUser() {
  const { userId, orgId } = await auth()

  if (userId) {
    const user = await currentUser()
    Sentry.setUser({
      id: userId,
      email: user?.emailAddresses[0]?.emailAddress,
      username: user?.username || undefined,
    })
    Sentry.setTag('org_id', orgId || 'personal')
  }
}

// Wrap API routes with Sentry + Clerk context
export function withAuthSentry(handler: Function) {
  return async (...args: any[]) => {
    await initSentryUser()
    try {
      return await handler(...args)
    } catch (error) {
      Sentry.captureException(error)
      throw error
    }
  }
}

// sentry.server.config.ts
import * as Sentry from '@sentry/nextjs'

Sentry.init({
  dsn: process.env.SENTRY_DSN,
  tracesSampleRate: 0.1,
  beforeSend(event) {
    // Scrub Clerk secret key if accidentally logged
    if (event.extra) {
      delete event.extra['CLERK_SECRET_KEY']
    }
    return event
  },
})

Step 5: Health Check Endpoint

// app/api/health/route.ts
import { clerkClient } from '@clerk/nextjs/server'

export async function GET() {
  const checks: Record<string, { status: string; latencyMs: number; detail?: string }> = {}

  // Check Clerk Backend API
  const clerkStart = Date.now()
  try {
    const client = await clerkClient()
    await client.users.getUserList({ limit: 1 })
    checks.clerk = { status: 'healthy', latencyMs: Date.now() - clerkStart }
  } catch (err: any) {
    checks.clerk = { status: 'unhealthy', latencyMs: Date.now() - clerkStart, detail: err.message }
  }

  // Check database
  const dbStart = Date.now()
  try {
    await db.$queryRaw`SELECT 1`
    checks.database = { status: 'healthy', latencyMs: Date.now() - dbStart }
  } catch (err: any) {
    checks.database = { status: 'unhealthy', latencyMs: Date.now() - dbStart, detail: err.message }
  }

  const allHealthy = Object.values(checks).every((c) => c.status === 'healthy')
  return Response.json(
    { status: allHealthy ? 'healthy' : 'degraded', checks, timestamp: new Date().toISOString() },
    { status: allHealthy ? 200 : 503 }
  )
}

Step 6: Dashboard Metrics Query

// app/api/admin/auth-metrics/route.ts
import { auth } from '@clerk/nextjs/server'

export async function GET() {
  const { has } = await auth()
  if (!has({ role: 'org:admin' })) {
    return Response.json({ error: 'Forbidden' }, { status: 403 })
  }

  const now = new Date()
  const dayAgo = new Date(now.getTime() - 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000)

  const metrics = {
    signIns24h: await db.auditLog.count({
      where: { action: 'sign_in', timestamp: { gte: dayAgo } },
    }),
    signUps24h: await db.auditLog.count({
      where: { action: 'sign_up', timestamp: { gte: dayAgo } },
    }),
    authErrors24h: await db.auditLog.count({
      where: { action: 'permission_denied', timestamp: { gte: dayAgo } },
    }),
    webhookEvents24h: await db.webhookEvent.count({
      where: { processedAt: { gte: dayAgo } },
    }),
  }

  return Response.json(metrics)
}

Output

• Structured auth event logging with Pino (sign-in, sign-out, sign-up, errors)
• Middleware performance tracking with slow-request alerts
• Webhook event monitoring with processing time metrics
• Sentry integration with Clerk user context
• Health check endpoint monitoring Clerk API and database
• Admin metrics endpoint for auth dashboard

Error Handling

Issue	Monitoring Action
High auth latency (p95 > 200ms)	Alert via middleware timing logs, investigate caching
Webhook failure rate > 1%	Alert on processing errors, check endpoint health
Session anomalies	Track unusual sign-in patterns via audit log
Clerk API errors	Capture with Sentry context, check status.clerk.com

Examples

Quick Monitoring One-Liner

# Watch auth events in real-time (development)
LOG_LEVEL=debug npm run dev 2>&1 | grep '"category":"auth"'

Resources

• Clerk Dashboard Analytics
• Sentry Next.js Integration
• Pino Logger

Next Steps

Proceed to

clerk-incident-runbook

for incident response procedures.