Research and Document GitHub SSO

[hcaballero2]

Description

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Investigate and formally document the technical architecture required to integrate GitHub to enabled SSO onto our site. This research spike will define how we manage user sessions, cache data, and link users to their respective repositories.

User Story

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As a development team, we need clear documentation and architectural decisions regarding the SSO and GitHub integration so that we can implement secure authentication and repository linking without guesswork.

Acceptance Criteria

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• A technical specification document is created and added to the docs folder of the repo.
• The document explicitly details the connection flow and data exchange between Github to our Firebase Database and back to our site.
• The strategy for securely caching user information on the frontend is defined.
• Session management rules are established, specifically detailing how long users are allowed to stay logged in and exactly when the session resets.

Implementation Notes

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• This is a research and documentation spike designed to figure out exactly what the team is doing before writing the actual implementation code.
• The assignee should review GitHub and Firebase documentation to ensure our proposed data flow is secure and feasible.
• The final documentation should include a sequence diagram or clear step-by-step list of the auth flow.

Testing Notes

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• Since this is a documentation task, traditional testing does not apply.
• The parent issue owner (Tech Lead) must review and approve the finalized documentation before the actual implementation sub-issues can begin.

Resources

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• Okta Developer Documentation (Authentication and Session Management).
• GitHub REST/GraphQL API Documentation (OAuth and Repository Access).

DUE NO LATER THAN 04/11/26