Separated Auth Model

Dyrected maintains a hard separation between the internal admin system and your application-level authentication. This prevents frontend user accounts from ever having implicit access to the dashboard.

The __admins Collection

The __admins collection is a dedicated, built-in auth collection that exclusively powers the Admin Dashboard login. It is:

• Private — not modifiable via the standard developer collection config.
• Isolated — completely separate from any frontend user sessions.
• Prioritized — when present, the Admin UI uses __admins as the sole login gateway, ignoring all other auth collections.

To use it, define it as an auth collection with the reserved slug:

const admins = defineCollection({
  slug: '__admins',
  auth: true,
  fields: [
    { name: 'name', type: 'text' },
    { name: 'roles', type: 'multiSelect', options: ['admin', 'editor'] },
  ],
})

Application Auth

Your application's user collections (e.g. customers, members) continue to use auth: true exactly as before. They have their own independent login endpoints and session tokens — they just don't power the admin dashboard.

// Login as a customer — completely independent of admin sessions
const { token } = await client.collection('customers').login(email, password)

Key Benefits

Admin UI Auth Priority

When the Admin UI loads, it resolves the login collection in this order:

1. Look for a collection with slug __admins.
2. If found, use it as the sole login gateway — no other auth collection is considered.
3. If __admins is not found, fall back to the first collection with auth: true.

This means if you have both __admins and customers with auth: true, the dashboard will always use __admins.

Migrating from a users Collection

If you currently use a users (or similarly named) collection for admin access, follow these steps to migrate to __admins without losing your existing records.

1. Rename the database table

Before restarting your server, rename the existing table. The table name is derived from the collection slug with a collection_ prefix.

SQLite / PostgreSQL / MySQL:

ALTER TABLE collection_users RENAME TO collection___admins;

2. Update your config

// Before
const admins = defineCollection({ slug: 'users', auth: true, fields: [...] })

// After
const admins = defineCollection({ slug: '__admins', auth: true, fields: [...] })

3. Restart

Once the table is renamed and the code updated, restart your server. The Admin UI will authenticate against the existing records in collection___admins.