Building Your MVP with OAuth 2.0

Building an MVP with OAuth 2.0 demands precision. It is not a feature you bolt on later. It is the gatekeeper between your application and the outside world. Done right, it lets users sign in without giving you their password. Done wrong, it becomes a breach waiting to happen.

OAuth 2.0 is an authorization framework. It handles delegated access. A user grants your app permission to act on their behalf with another service—Google, GitHub, any provider that speaks the protocol. Instead of storing credentials, you store tokens. Access tokens open the door to data. Refresh tokens keep that door open without asking the user to log in again.

For an MVP, use only what you need. Pick the grant type that fits. The Authorization Code Flow is safe for server-side apps. The PKCE extension makes it safe for public clients like mobile or single-page apps. Avoid the Implicit Flow—it is outdated and insecure.

Start with a provider that supports OAuth 2.0 out of the box. Implement token exchange at login. Secure storage is non-negotiable—keep tokens encrypted at rest, never in plain text. Validate scopes to control exactly what parts of an API your app can touch. Always handle token expiration cleanly to avoid breaking the user flow.

Test your OAuth 2.0 integration early. Simulate failure states: expired tokens, revoked access, network drops. An MVP with broken authentication will fail, no matter how good the core product is. Proving authentication works under pressure is part of proving your product works at all.

OAuth 2.0 can scale beyond the MVP. The same flows you integrate now will handle millions of users later. That is why you get it right from the first commit.

Build your MVP with OAuth 2.0 the way it was meant to be done. Skip fragile shortcuts. See it live in minutes with hoop.dev—where secure, production-grade authentication is already wired in.