Clerk Incident Runbook

Overview

Procedures for responding to Clerk-related incidents in production.

Prerequisites

• Access to Clerk dashboard
• Access to application logs
• Emergency contact list
• Rollback procedures documented

Incident Categories

Category 1: Complete Auth Outage

Symptoms: All users unable to sign in, middleware returning errors

Immediate Actions:

# 1. Check Clerk status
curl -s https://status.clerk.com/api/v1/status | jq

# 2. Check your endpoint
curl -I https://yourapp.com/api/health/clerk

# 3. Check environment variables
vercel env ls | grep CLERK

Mitigation Steps:

// Emergency bypass mode (use with caution)
// middleware.ts
import { clerkMiddleware } from '@clerk/nextjs/server'
import { NextResponse } from 'next/server'

const EMERGENCY_BYPASS = process.env.CLERK_EMERGENCY_BYPASS === 'true'

export default clerkMiddleware(async (auth, request) => {
  if (EMERGENCY_BYPASS) {
    // Log for audit
    console.warn('[EMERGENCY] Auth bypass active', {
      path: request.nextUrl.pathname,
      timestamp: new Date().toISOString()
    })
    return NextResponse.next()
  }

  // Normal auth flow
  await auth.protect()
})

Category 2: Webhook Processing Failure

Symptoms: User data out of sync, missing user records

Diagnosis:

# Check webhook endpoint
curl -X POST https://yourapp.com/api/webhooks/clerk \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"type":"ping"}' \
  -w "\n%{http_code}"

# Check Clerk dashboard for failed webhooks
# Dashboard > Webhooks > Failed Deliveries

Recovery:

// scripts/resync-users.ts
import { clerkClient } from '@clerk/nextjs/server'
import { db } from '../lib/db'

async function resyncAllUsers() {
  const client = await clerkClient()
  let offset = 0
  const limit = 100

  while (true) {
    const { data: users, totalCount } = await client.users.getUserList({
      limit,
      offset
    })

    for (const user of users) {
      await db.user.upsert({
        where: { clerkId: user.id },
        update: {
          email: user.emailAddresses[0]?.emailAddress,
          firstName: user.firstName,
          lastName: user.lastName,
          updatedAt: new Date()
        },
        create: {
          clerkId: user.id,
          email: user.emailAddresses[0]?.emailAddress,
          firstName: user.firstName,
          lastName: user.lastName
        }
      })
    }

    console.log(`Synced ${offset + users.length} of ${totalCount} users`)
    offset += limit

    if (offset >= totalCount) break
  }

  console.log('Resync complete')
}

resyncAllUsers()

Category 3: Security Incident

Symptoms: Unauthorized access detected, suspicious sessions

Immediate Actions:

// scripts/emergency-session-revoke.ts
import { clerkClient } from '@clerk/nextjs/server'

async function revokeUserSessions(userId: string) {
  const client = await clerkClient()

  // Get all active sessions
  const sessions = await client.sessions.getSessionList({
    userId,
    status: 'active'
  })

  // Revoke all sessions
  for (const session of sessions.data) {
    await client.sessions.revokeSession(session.id)
    console.log(`Revoked session: ${session.id}`)
  }

  console.log(`Revoked ${sessions.data.length} sessions for user ${userId}`)
}

// Revoke all sessions for compromised user
revokeUserSessions('user_xxx')

// scripts/emergency-lockout.ts
import { clerkClient } from '@clerk/nextjs/server'

async function lockoutUser(userId: string) {
  const client = await clerkClient()

  // Ban user (prevents new sign-ins)
  await client.users.banUser(userId)

  // Revoke all sessions
  const sessions = await client.sessions.getSessionList({
    userId,
    status: 'active'
  })

  for (const session of sessions.data) {
    await client.sessions.revokeSession(session.id)
  }

  console.log(`User ${userId} locked out and all sessions revoked`)
}

Category 4: Performance Degradation

Symptoms: Slow sign-in, high latency, timeouts

Diagnosis:

// scripts/diagnose-performance.ts
async function diagnosePerformance() {
  const results = {
    authCheck: 0,
    getUserList: 0,
    currentUser: 0
  }

  // Measure auth check
  const authStart = performance.now()
  await auth()
  results.authCheck = performance.now() - authStart

  // Measure API call
  const apiStart = performance.now()
  const client = await clerkClient()
  await client.users.getUserList({ limit: 1 })
  results.getUserList = performance.now() - apiStart

  // Measure currentUser
  const userStart = performance.now()
  await currentUser()
  results.currentUser = performance.now() - userStart

  console.log('Performance Diagnosis:', results)

  // Check for issues
  if (results.authCheck > 100) {
    console.warn('Auth check slow - check middleware configuration')
  }
  if (results.getUserList > 500) {
    console.warn('API slow - check Clerk status or network')
  }

  return results
}

Runbook Procedures

Procedure 1: Auth Outage Response

1. [ ] Confirm outage (check status.clerk.com)
2. [ ] Check application logs for errors
3. [ ] Verify environment variables
4. [ ] If Clerk outage:
   a. [ ] Enable emergency bypass (if safe)
   b. [ ] Notify users via status page
   c. [ ] Monitor Clerk status
5. [ ] If application issue:
   a. [ ] Check recent deployments
   b. [ ] Rollback if necessary
   c. [ ] Check middleware configuration
6. [ ] Document timeline and actions
7. [ ] Conduct post-mortem

Procedure 2: Security Breach Response

1. [ ] Identify affected accounts
2. [ ] Revoke all sessions for affected users
3. [ ] Lock compromised accounts
4. [ ] Reset API keys if exposed
5. [ ] Enable additional verification
6. [ ] Notify affected users
7. [ ] Review access logs
8. [ ] Document and report

Procedure 3: Data Sync Recovery

1. [ ] Identify sync gap (check webhook logs)
2. [ ] Pause webhook processing
3. [ ] Export current database state
4. [ ] Run resync script
5. [ ] Verify data integrity
6. [ ] Resume webhook processing
7. [ ] Monitor for new issues

Emergency Contacts

# .github/INCIDENT_CONTACTS.yml
contacts:
  on_call:
    - name: On-Call Engineer
      phone: "+1-xxx-xxx-xxxx"
      slack: "@oncall"

  clerk_support:
    - url: "https://clerk.com/support"
    - email: "support@clerk.com"
    - priority: "For enterprise: contact account manager"

  escalation:
    - level: 1
      contact: "On-call engineer"
      time: "0-15 min"
    - level: 2
      contact: "Engineering lead"
      time: "15-30 min"
    - level: 3
      contact: "CTO"
      time: "30+ min"

Post-Incident

Template

# Incident Report: [Title]

## Summary
- **Date:** YYYY-MM-DD
- **Duration:** X hours Y minutes
- **Severity:** P1/P2/P3
- **Impact:** [Number of affected users]

## Timeline
- HH:MM - Incident detected
- HH:MM - Initial response
- HH:MM - Mitigation applied
- HH:MM - Resolution confirmed

## Root Cause
[Description of root cause]

## Resolution
[Steps taken to resolve]

## Prevention
- [ ] Action item 1
- [ ] Action item 2

## Lessons Learned
[Key takeaways]

Output

• Incident response procedures
• Recovery scripts
• Emergency bypass capability
• Post-incident templates

Resources

• Clerk Status
• Clerk Support
• Clerk Discord

Next Steps

Proceed to

clerk-data-handling

for user data management.