Nx Cloud and Personal Access Tokens

From Nx 19.7 repositories are connected to Nx Cloud via a property in nx.json called nxCloudId. By default this value allows anyone who clones the repository read-write access to Nx Cloud features for that workspace. These permissions can be updated in the workspace settings. To disallow access to anonymous users or allow read-write access to known users it is required that all users provision their own personal access token. To do that they need to use npx nx login.

Personal Access Tokens (PATs)

When you run npx nx login you will be directed to the Nx Cloud app where you will be required to create an account and login. A new personal access token will be provisioned and saved in a local configuration file in your home folder (the location of this will be displayed when login is complete and varies depending on OS).

View your Personal Access Tokens

You can view your personal access tokens in the Nx Cloud app by navigating to your profile settings. Click your user icon in the top right corner of the app and select Profile.

From there, click on the Personal access tokens tab.

Manually create a Personal Access Token

Personal access tokens can also be manually created in the Nx Cloud app. Navigate to your profile settings and click on the Personal access tokens tab. Select New access token, enter a name for the token and click Generate Token. The token will be displayed on the screen and can be copied to your clipboard.

You can then use nx-cloud configure in your terminal to set the token in your local configuration file.

Permissions

There are two types of permissions that can be granted to users.

Workspace ID access level

These are the permissions granted to users who are not logged in or are not members of the Nx Cloud organization for this workspace. By default, all users have read-write access to the workspace. This can be updated in the workspace settings to read-only or none.

While the initial setting for workspace ID access level is read-write, we recommend that you change this setting to read-only or none for any repository that is visible to people that do not have permission to edit the repository (i.e. open source repositories or repositories that are visible across an organization, but only editable by a specific team).

Personal Access Token access level

When a workspace member logs in with a personal access token after running npx nx login they are granted access to Nx Cloud features. By default all personal access tokens have read-write access to the remote cache. This can be updated to read-only in the workspace settings if required.

Better Security

Without an access token committed to your nx.json file you gain more fine-grained control over who has access to your cache artifacts and who can utilise Nx Cloud features that you pay for. When you remove a member from your organization they will immediately lose access to all Nx Cloud features saving you the trouble of needing to cycle any tokens you were previously committing to the repository.