Using Personal Access Tokens

Overview of Personal Access Tokens and why you need them

Personal Access Tokens (PATs) are the secure way to authenticate with CUEBES when using Git clients, IDEs, or scripts. They replace passwords and provide granular access control.

Why Use Personal Access Tokens?

Security Benefits

  • Not your password - If a token is compromised, revoke it without changing your account password
  • Granular permissions - Create tokens with only the access they need (read-only or read-write)
  • Expiration - Set tokens to automatically expire
  • Audit trail - See when and where tokens were last used
  • Multiple tokens - Create different tokens for different devices or applications

When You Need a Token

You need a Personal Access Token to:

  • Clone private repositories
  • Push to any repository (public or private)
  • Pull from private repositories
  • Use Git in any IDE (Xcode, VS Code, etc.)
  • Use Git from the command line
  • Automate Git operations in scripts

Token Permissions

Read Permission

Allows:

  • Cloning repositories
  • Fetching updates
  • Pulling changes

Write Permission

Includes everything in Read, plus:

  • Pushing commits
  • Creating branches
  • Deleting remote branches
Best practice: Use the minimum permissions needed. If you only need to clone and pull, use a read-only token.

How to Use a Token

When Git asks for authentication:

  • Username: Your CUEBES username
  • Password: Your Personal Access Token (not your account password!)