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AUTH_ERROR — Generic authentication failure

Summary

Section titled “Summary”

The key looked syntactically valid but our auth layer couldn’t resolve it to an organization. This is the catch-all for auth failures that aren’t a missing key, a revoked key, or an expired key.

HTTP status

Section titled “HTTP status”

401 Unauthorized. Standard envelope.

Example response

Section titled “Example response”
{
  "success": false,
  "error": {
    "code": "AUTH_ERROR",
    "message": "Authentication failed. The key could not be resolved.",
    "request_id": "req_01HXJZK4ABCDEF",
    "doc_url": "https://docs.surveycoder.io/errors/auth-error"
  }
}

Why this happens

Section titled “Why this happens”
  • The key was deleted (not just revoked) in the dashboard.
  • A backing data store had a transient blip during key lookup.
  • The key was issued for a different environment (e.g. a sandbox key used against production).
  • The auth cache hasn’t caught up with a very recent key rotation (usually under 30s).

How to fix it

Section titled “How to fix it”
  1. Check the key at surveycoder.io/api-keys. If it’s gone, generate a new one.
  2. Confirm prefix: scp_live_ for api.surveycoder.io, scp_test_ for test mode.
  3. Wait 30 seconds and retry once — transient auth-cache issues self-heal quickly.
  4. If it persists, email support@surveycoder.io with the request_id.
Section titled “Related”