ZITADEL as Identity Provider for AI Research Collaborations

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To use ZITADEL as an Identity Provider (IdP) for an AI research collaboration, you'll need to set up an organization within ZITADEL, and then configure the identity provider settings to handle authentication for your users. In the context of Pulumi, you'd use ZITADEL resources to programmatically create and manage these configurations.

Below is a Pulumi program that demonstrates how you can create an organization in ZITADEL, set up a domain for it, and define an identity provider using GitHub as an example. I've chosen GitHub here since it's a common platform for developers and I assume that contributors to an AI research project would have GitHub accounts. However, ZITADEL supports various IdP integrations, and you could modify the program to integrate with different identity providers (e.g., Google, LDAP).

```python
import pulumi
import pulumi_zitadel as zitadel

# Create an organization within ZITADEL for your AI research collaboration.
org = zitadel.Org("ai-research-org",
    name="AIResearchCollab")  # Replace with your desired organization name.

# Set up a domain for the organization.
# The domain should be verified in ZITADEL to ensure it is owned by you and that you can receive emails on it.
domain = zitadel.Domain("ai-research-domain",
    name="ai-research-collab.com",  # Replace with your actual domain name.
    org_id=org.id,  # Associate the domain with the newly created organization.
    is_primary=True)

# Define a GitHub Identity Provider for your organization.
# This allows users to authenticate using their GitHub credentials.
idp_github = zitadel.OrgIdpGithub("ai-research-github-idp",
    name="AIResearchGitHub",
    org_id=org.id,  # Associate the GitHub IdP with your organization.
    scopes=["read:user", "user:email"],  # Scopes required for authentication.
    clientId="github-client-id",  # Replace with your GitHub OAuth App client ID.
    clientSecret="github-client-secret",  # Replace with your GitHub OAuth App client secret.
    is_auto_update=True,  # Automatically update user profile on each login.
    is_linking_allowed=True,  # Allow users to link their GitHub account.
    is_creation_allowed=True)  # Allow new users to be created upon first login.

# Expose IdP configuration details as outputs.
pulumi.export("organization_id", org.id)  # Organization ID might be needed for further configuration or management.
pulumi.export("domain_name", domain.name)  # The domain name for organizational emails and potentially for a custom UI.
pulumi.export("github_idp_name", idp_github.name)  # The GitHub IdP name within ZITADEL.

```

Here is the breakdown of what the above Pulumi program does:

1. **Organization Creation**:
    - Creates a new organization within ZITADEL where your AI research collaboration will reside. This is analogous to creating a workspace within which all your identity configurations will be scoped.

2. **Domain Configuration**:
    - Adds a domain to the organization, which is used for sending organization-related emails. Note that in a real-world scenario, you would have to verify ownership of this domain with ZITADEL.

3. **GitHub Identity Provider (IdP) Setup**:
    - Sets up GitHub as an identity provider by supplying the required OAuth credentials. This step is important because it's how ZITADEL will communicate with GitHub to authenticate users.
    - Specifies the permissions (scopes) that ZITADEL will request from GitHub during the authentication process, such as reading the user’s profile and email.
    - Configures auto-update for user profiles, linking of GitHub accounts, and creation of new users upon first login.

At the end of the program, it exports some of the configuration details such as the organization ID, domain name, and identity provider name as outputs. These can be used for retrieval in other Pulumi programs or for reference later on.

The `clientId` and `clientSecret` should come from the OAuth application setup that you have to create on GitHub to allow authentication requests from ZITADEL. Be sure to replace the placeholders with your actual client ID and client secret.

This program will set up the initial configuration for using ZITADEL as an Identity Provider for your AI research collaborations. If you have multiple identity providers, you would create multiple similar configurations for each one.