OpenFGA: Relationship-Based Authorization at Scale
In this episode of 🌩️ Thunder, Raghd Hamzeh, OpenFGA maintainer at Auth0, explains relationship-based authorization. When Whitney shares a document with Raghd, you tell OpenFGA “Raghd is now an editor of this document.” Later, when Raghd tries to access it, OpenFGA already knows . There are no database calls, and there is no runtime logic. We cover how OpenFGA differs from RBAC and attribute-based systems, why sharing becomes trivially easy, how immutable authorization models let you test changes against production data safely, and what auditability looks like when permissions live outside your application code.