Personalization customizes your documentation for each user when they are logged in. For example, you can prefill their API keys, show content specific to their plan or role, or hide sections they don’t need access to.

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Personalization features

Customize content with these personalization capabilities.

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API key prefilling

Automatically populate API playground fields with user-specific values by returning matching field names in your user data. The field names in your user data must exactly match the names in the API playground for automatic prefilling to work.

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Dynamic MDX content

Display dynamic content based on user information like name, plan, or organization using the user variable. 
Welcome back, {user.firstName}! Your {user.org?.plan} plan includes...
See the User data format section below for detailed examples and implementation guidance.

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Page visibility

Restrict which pages are visible to your users by adding groups fields to your pages’ frontmatter. By default, every page is visible to every user. Users will only see pages for groups that they are in. 
---
title: "Managing your users"
description: "Adding and removing users from your organization"
groups: ["admin"]
---

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User data format

When implementing personalization, your system returns user data in a specific format that enables content customization. This data can be sent as either a raw JSON object or within a signed JWT, depending on your handshake method. The shape of the data is the same for both. 
type User = {
  expiresAt?: number;
  groups?: string[];
  content?: Record<string, any>;
  apiPlaygroundInputs?: {
    header?: Record<string, any>;
    query?: Record<string, any>;
    cookie?: Record<string, any>;
    server?: Record<string, string>;
  };
};
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expiresAt
number
Session expiration time in seconds since epoch. If the user loads a page after this time, their stored data is automatically deleted and they must reauthenticate.
For JWT handshakes: This differs from the JWT’s exp claim, which determines when a JWT is considered invalid. Set the JWT exp claim to a short duration (10 seconds or less) for security. Use expiresAt for the actual session length (hours to weeks).
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groups
string[]
List of groups the user belongs to. Pages with matching groups in their frontmatter are visible to this user.Example: User with groups: ["admin", "engineering"] can access pages tagged with either the admin or engineering groups.
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content
object
Custom data accessible in your MDX content via the user variable. Use this for dynamic personalization throughout your documentation.Basic example:
{ "firstName": "Ronan", "company": "Acme Corp", "plan": "Enterprise" }
Usage in MDX:
Welcome back, {user.firstName}! Your {user.plan} plan includes...
With the example user data, this would render as: Welcome back, Ronan! Your Enterprise plan includes…Advanced conditional rendering:
Authentication is an enterprise feature. {
  user.org === undefined
    ? <>To access this feature, first create an account at the <a href="https://dashboard.mintlify.com/login">Mintlify dashboard</a>.</>
    : user.org.plan !== 'enterprise'
      ? <>You are currently on the ${user.org.plan ?? 'free'} plan. See <a href="https://mintlify.com/pricing">our pricing page</a> for information about upgrading.</>
      : <>To request this feature for your enterprise org, contact your admin.</>
}
The information in user is only available for logged-in users. For logged-out users, the value of user will be {}. To prevent the page from crashing for logged-out users, always use optional chaining on your user fields. For example, {user.org?.plan}.
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apiPlaygroundInputs
object
User-specific values that prefill API playground fields. Saves users time by auto-populating their data when testing APIs.Example:
{
  "header": { "X-API-Key": "user_api_key_123" },
  "server": { "subdomain": "foo" },
  "query": { "org_id": "12345" }
}
If a user makes requests at a specific subdomain, you can send { server: { subdomain: 'foo' } } as an apiPlaygroundInputs field. This value will be prefilled on any API page with the subdomain value.
The header, query, and cookie fields will only prefill if they are part of your OpenAPI security scheme. If a field is in either the Authorization or Server sections, it will prefill. Creating a standard header parameter named Authorization will not enable this feature.

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Example user data

{
  "expiresAt": 1735689600,
  "groups": ["admin", "beta-users"],
  "content": {
    "firstName": "Jane",
    "lastName": "Smith",
    "company": "TechCorp",
    "plan": "Enterprise",
    "region": "us-west"
  },
  "apiPlaygroundInputs": {
    "header": {
      "Authorization": "Bearer abc123",
      "X-Org-ID": "techcorp"
    },
    "server": {
      "environment": "production",
      "region": "us-west"
    }
  }
}

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Configuring personalization

Select the handshake method that you want to configure.

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Prerequisites

  • A login system that can generate and sign JWTs
  • A backend service that can create redirect URLs

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Implementation

1

Generate a private key.

  1. In your dashboard, go to Authentication.
  2. Select Personalization.
  3. Select JWT.
  4. Enter the URL of your existing login flow and select Save changes.
  5. Select Generate new key.
  6. Store your key securely where it can be accessed by your backend.
2

Integrate Mintlify personalization into your login flow.

Modify your existing login flow to include these steps after user login:
  • Create a JWT containing the logged-in user’s info in the User format. See the User data format section above for more information.
  • Sign the JWT with the secret key, using the ES256 algorithm.
  • Create a redirect URL back to your docs, including the JWT as the hash.

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Example

Your documentation is hosted at docs.foo.com. You want your docs to be separate from your dashboard (or you don’t have a dashboard) and enable personalization.Generate a JWT secret. Then create a login endpoint at https://foo.com/docs-login that initiates a login flow to your documentation.After verifying user credentials:
  • Generate a JWT with user data in Mintlify’s format.
  • Sign the JWT and redirect to https://docs.foo.com#{SIGNED_JWT}.
import * as jose from 'jose';
import { Request, Response } from 'express';

const TWO_WEEKS_IN_MS = 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 7 * 2;

const signingKey = await jose.importPKCS8(process.env.MINTLIFY_PRIVATE_KEY, 'ES256');

export async function handleRequest(req: Request, res: Response) {
  const user = {
    expiresAt: Math.floor((Date.now() + TWO_WEEKS_IN_MS) / 1000),
    groups: res.locals.user.groups,
    content: {
      firstName: res.locals.user.firstName,
      lastName: res.locals.user.lastName,
    },
  };

  const jwt = await new jose.SignJWT(user)
    .setProtectedHeader({ alg: 'ES256' })
    .setExpirationTime('10 s')
    .sign(signingKey);

  return res.redirect(`https://docs.foo.com#${jwt}`);
}

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Preserving page anchors

To redirect users to specific sections after login, use this URL format: https://docs.foo.com/page#jwt={SIGNED_JWT}&anchor={ANCHOR}.Example:
  • Original URL: https://docs.foo.com/quickstart#step-one
  • Redirect URL: https://docs.foo.com/quickstart#jwt={SIGNED_JWT}&anchor=step-one