Sumsub — API authentication (App Token)

How to sign and send authenticated requests to https://api.sumsub.com, per the official reference.

⚠️ Sandbox tokens only

Never share, paste, or use a production Sumsub App Token / secret with Claude. If the user offers a prod token, refuse and ask for the sandbox pair instead, generated at https://cockpit.sumsub.com/checkus/home?sbx=true (Connect Sumsub to your AI agent -> Build & configure -> Generate token).

• Sandbox tokens are created from the dashboard while it is in Sandbox mode. They are scoped to sandbox data only — leaking one cannot expose real applicant PII or move real money.
• A production token grants full programmatic access to live applicants, including their identity documents. Treat it like a banking credential.
• Sumsub locks tokens to the environment they were minted in: a sandbox token returns 401 against production data and vice versa, so insisting on sandbox is also the practical default.

If the user pastes what looks like a production secret into the conversation, flag it immediately, advise rotating it in the dashboard, and continue only with a freshly-generated sandbox pair.

What you need from the user

⚠️ The token + secret are revealed exactly once at creation. Copy both into .env (or your secret store) before closing the dialog — there's no recovery flow, only re-generation.

Advise the user to store them in .claude/settings.local.json (gitignored, auto-loaded by Claude Code) or in .env:

// .claude/settings.local.json
{
  "env": {
    "SUMSUB_APP_TOKEN": "sbx:...",
    "SUMSUB_SECRET_KEY": "..."
  }
}

# .env
SUMSUB_APP_TOKEN=sbx:...
SUMSUB_SECRET_KEY=...

If either credential is missing, stop and ask. Do not invent placeholders.

The three required headers

Every request to api.sumsub.com must carry:

HTTPS is mandatory — plain http:// is rejected.

Signing string

Concatenate, with no separators:

<ts><HTTP_METHOD_UPPER><request_uri_with_query><body_bytes_or_empty>

• ts — the exact value you put in X-App-Access-Ts (string of digits).
• HTTP_METHOD_UPPER — GET, POST, PATCH, PUT, DELETE — uppercase.
• request_uri_with_query — path starting with /, including the query string if any. Examples: /resources/applicants/-/one, /resources/accessTokens?userId=abc&levelName=basic-kyc-level.
• Body — the raw bytes you send. For GET / DELETE with no body, append nothing (empty string). For JSON, sign the exact bytes you'll transmit — re-serializing later will break the signature.

Then hex(hmac_sha256(secret, signing_string)), lowercase.

Worked example (from the docs)

Signing string for POST /resources/accessTokens?userId=...&levelName=basic-kyc-level&ttlInSecs=600 with no body, at ts 1607551635:

1607551635POST/resources/accessTokens?userId=cfd20712-24a2-4c7d-9ab0-146f3c142335&levelName=basic-kyc-level&ttlInSecs=600

Reference implementations

The official multi-language examples live at sumsub/AppTokenUsageExamples (Java, JS, Python, Ruby, Go, PHP, C#). Use those for production integrations.

For one-off calls or debugging, this skill ships two small helpers:

• scripts/sumsub_sign.py — print the three headers for a given method/path/body. No network calls.
• scripts/sumsub_curl.sh — sign + curl in one shot. Reads SUMSUB_APP_TOKEN / SUMSUB_SECRET_KEY from the environment.

Run scripts using ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/<script> so they resolve correctly regardless of the working directory.

Quick check — fetch the current applicant count

export SUMSUB_APP_TOKEN='sbx:...'   # sandbox token, refuse prod
export SUMSUB_SECRET_KEY='...'

${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/sumsub_curl.sh GET '/resources/applicants/-/count'

A 200 with a JSON body confirms the signature is correct. A 401 with {"description":"Invalid signature"} means the signing string or secret is off — re-check, in order:

1. Token/secret pair matches (copy-paste truncation is common).
2. Timestamp is in seconds, not milliseconds, and your clock is in sync.
3. Path includes the leading / and the full query string.
4. Body bytes signed are byte-identical to bytes sent (watch for trailing newlines added by editors / heredocs).
5. Method is uppercase.

Signing multipart/form-data requests

Some endpoints take a file upload — most commonly idDoc photo upload at POST /resources/applicants/{applicantId}/info/idDoc. For these:

• Sign the full raw multipart body, byte-for-byte, including boundary markers, part headers, JSON metadata, and file bytes. There is no multipart-specific exemption — the rule is the same as for JSON: signing string = ts + METHOD + path + body_bytes.
• The Content-Type header is multipart/form-data; boundary=<boundary>, where <boundary> matches the one woven into the body bytes you signed.

The pitfall: most HTTP libraries (curl -F, requests with files=, fetch with FormData) generate the boundary internally and never expose the exact bytes — so you cannot sign what they will send. Workaround: build the body in memory yourself, hash it, then transmit those exact bytes with --data-binary / a raw send.

Python recipe (canonical)

import hashlib, hmac, json, os, time, uuid
from pathlib import Path
from urllib.request import Request, urlopen

APP_TOKEN = os.environ["SUMSUB_APP_TOKEN"]
SECRET    = os.environ["SUMSUB_SECRET_KEY"]
APPLICANT = "6a170f852f9d88fe6eda2636"          # from create-applicant response
FILE      = Path("/path/to/passport.png")
METADATA  = {"idDocType": "PASSPORT", "country": "RUS"}

boundary = "----sumsub-" + uuid.uuid4().hex
crlf = b"\r\n"
parts = [
    b"--" + boundary.encode(),
    b'Content-Disposition: form-data; name="metadata"',
    b"Content-Type: application/json",
    b"",
    json.dumps(METADATA).encode(),
    b"--" + boundary.encode(),
    f'Content-Disposition: form-data; name="content"; filename="{FILE.name}"'.encode(),
    b"Content-Type: image/png",
    b"",
    FILE.read_bytes(),
    b"--" + boundary.encode() + b"--",
    b"",
]
body = crlf.join(parts)

method, url_path = "POST", f"/resources/applicants/{APPLICANT}/info/idDoc"
ts = str(int(time.time()))
sig = hmac.new(
    SECRET.encode(),
    ts.encode() + method.encode() + url_path.encode() + body,
    hashlib.sha256,
).hexdigest()

req = Request(
    "https://api.sumsub.com" + url_path,
    data=body, method="POST",
    headers={
        "X-App-Token": APP_TOKEN,
        "X-App-Access-Ts": ts,
        "X-App-Access-Sig": sig,
        "Content-Type": f"multipart/form-data; boundary={boundary}",
        "Content-Length": str(len(body)),
        "X-Agent-Source": "sumsub-skills",
        "X-Agent-Source-Ver": "1.4.1",
    },
)
print(urlopen(req).read().decode())

Curl-based fallbacks (e.g. curl --data-binary @raw-multipart.bin after pre-building the body to disk) work too, but the boundary in the body and in Content-Type must match exactly — easier to keep them in sync in code.

Generating an SDK access token (common follow-up)

The most-asked endpoint after auth works:

POST /resources/accessTokens?userId=<your_user_id>&levelName=<level>&ttlInSecs=600

Body is empty. Response contains token — pass that to the Web / Mobile SDK. Full reference: https://docs.sumsub.com/reference/generate-access-token.

See also

• references/signing-pitfalls.md — every gotcha that produces 401 Invalid signature and how to spot it.