No, in fact I don't. But this post wouldn't be of any help anyway. It feels like it's about nothing, there is no substance, just stating some obvious facts. Without examples that lead to some real recommendations, this whole expertise claimed by the author is of no use.
> Why discord domain verification instead of domain-verifications with a dynamic list on entries?
The TXT record itself is already a dynamic list of entries. It's far simpler and easier to iterate through the list and compare the start of each value with your search string until you find "discord domain verification" directly than it would be to do anything else.
Example:
;; ANSWER SECTION:
ycombinator.com. 300 IN TXT "openai-domain-verification=dv-QbhxxK0G0JK0dnyZ4YTsNAfw"
ycombinator.com. 300 IN TXT "v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com include:mailgun.org a:rsweb1-36.investorflow.com include:_spf.createsend.com include:servers.mcsv.net -all"
ycombinator.com. 300 IN TXT "MS=ms37374900"
ycombinator.com. 300 IN TXT "anthropic-domain-verification-0qe2ww=yK576oHdDgyTcXgkPfj1KXgGt"
ycombinator.com. 300 IN TXT "ZOOM_verify_2ndw8KZxSRa8PT8NmdyXvw"
ycombinator.com. 300 IN TXT "google-site-verification=KsI69Y_jEVkp4eXqSQ9R9gwxjIpZznvuvrus6UolB9Y"
ycombinator.com. 300 IN TXT "ca3-4861b957e83847c188e45d04ec314ee3"
ycombinator.com. 300 IN TXT "apple-domain-verification=WG0sP5Alm7N6h1Te"
ycombinator.com. 300 IN TXT "dropbox-domain-verification=asc63coma4mv"
ycombinator.com. 300 IN TXT "google-site-verification=GJKdQskycEclAGPua3yXB9m_nVhxbrsVps_y-t9SXV0"
ycombinator.com. 300 IN TXT "Wayback verify for support request 741082"
ycombinator.com. 300 IN TXT "google-site-verification=rivq8jKu6AADGtbbEzJhmOpcqq08B7QxIzXxYV8DtyU"
ycombinator.com. 300 IN TXT "rippling-domain-verification=a660f7a4ab77a3de"
"Domain-verifications" is an invitation for everyone else that might need it to use the same standard and convention. "Discord-domain-verification" is not, it's what feels like polluting the global namespace with the company name that might cease to exist in a few years.
At the very least, it should be "domain-verification-discord", "-google" and so on. Maybe even "-com.discord", "-com.google"? And the first part clearly standardized and registered, instead of one entity using "domain" and another one "site".
The password-reset well-known endpoint is used by password managers to show a "Change password..." button in their interface, which magically links to the password change page described in that well-known file.
If the website implements it. What about email preferences? Removing account links? There are many use-cases you might want to redirect a user to, but having to make their own well known for it seems dumb instead of using a more generic one. I guess the more flexible it is, the harder adoption becomes as the usage within a spec might diverge, or it grows outside of the spec and becomes unofficial. So maybe password-reset is correct level of specification.
Anyway discord domain verification can tell in their onboarding docs to put it anywhere. It being well known does nothing. If there was a root level domain verification, then you might as well put it under that. But otherwise why go through a process?
It’s just easier for everybody to implement. Password manager opens https://<some-website>/.well-known/change-password in the user’s browser, it gets redirected to the actual page where password change form is located. You could make the password manager look it up in a link tree and then open a correct page, yes, but...
> I guess the more flexible it is, the harder adoption becomes
Yeah. If there is one account management related URL that password managers care about, it’s the change password page. You don’t really need to change email on your account that often, but it is probably a good idea to rotate your password once in a while. So I guess it’s a good idea to make it as easy as possible to adopt – which means just a single URL redirecting to another.
> If the website implements it.
That’s a good catch, though. I guess right now password managers would still have to make a “preflight” request just to see if /.well-known/change-password is implemented before showing it to the user. (But that can go away if most websites adopt it.)
well-known is for programmatic access, it either namespaces something you’re told to look for (e.g. various types of domain markers) or it lets you discover a feature / endpoint.
In the latter case you just probe, for instance if you’re a password manager and you have a password for site A you hit A/.well-known/change-password and if they returns something you can surface a change password link to your user.
The one you found is for OIDC provider discovery (https://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-discovery-1_0.html#P...) so someone tells you they want to log in via Google, you hit that endpoint, and it lets you setup Google as an oidc provider rather without needing to hard-code providers. Even if you just want to support Google as a provider, you hit that and you get the entire configuration rather than have to hunt down the same information in the docs.
I spent 10 minutes searching for one in the article, in the RFC, in the wikipedia page, on google, to search for a .well-known example. Couldn't find one.
I did read one before while working with github oidc, and I did find it very useful.
What is it with technical documentations that go deep describing what it is in plenty words but refusing to give a single example? This far from the first case I've ran into either.
Let's stop polluting the root of a domain!
[1] https://llmstxt.org/
Why password-reset instead of a more generic link tree?
Why discord domain verification instead of domain-verifications with a dynamic list on entries?
Seems like a waste of time. I would just define my own spec outside of well known for my use case.
That’s on Discord. They’re not in the registry: https://www.iana.org/assignments/well-known-uris/well-known-...
> Why password-reset instead of a more generic link tree?
[edit: answered in more detail in a sibling thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48596286]
The TXT record itself is already a dynamic list of entries. It's far simpler and easier to iterate through the list and compare the start of each value with your search string until you find "discord domain verification" directly than it would be to do anything else.
Example:
At the very least, it should be "domain-verification-discord", "-google" and so on. Maybe even "-com.discord", "-com.google"? And the first part clearly standardized and registered, instead of one entity using "domain" and another one "site".
The password-reset well-known endpoint is used by password managers to show a "Change password..." button in their interface, which magically links to the password change page described in that well-known file.
Anyway discord domain verification can tell in their onboarding docs to put it anywhere. It being well known does nothing. If there was a root level domain verification, then you might as well put it under that. But otherwise why go through a process?
> I guess the more flexible it is, the harder adoption becomes
Yeah. If there is one account management related URL that password managers care about, it’s the change password page. You don’t really need to change email on your account that often, but it is probably a good idea to rotate your password once in a while. So I guess it’s a good idea to make it as easy as possible to adopt – which means just a single URL redirecting to another.
> If the website implements it.
That’s a good catch, though. I guess right now password managers would still have to make a “preflight” request just to see if /.well-known/change-password is implemented before showing it to the user. (But that can go away if most websites adopt it.)
Here's one I could find: https://accounts.google.com/.well-known/openid-configuration
But how does one even find this?
In the latter case you just probe, for instance if you’re a password manager and you have a password for site A you hit A/.well-known/change-password and if they returns something you can surface a change password link to your user.
The one you found is for OIDC provider discovery (https://openid.net/specs/openid-connect-discovery-1_0.html#P...) so someone tells you they want to log in via Google, you hit that endpoint, and it lets you setup Google as an oidc provider rather without needing to hard-code providers. Even if you just want to support Google as a provider, you hit that and you get the entire configuration rather than have to hunt down the same information in the docs.
I did read one before while working with github oidc, and I did find it very useful.
What is it with technical documentations that go deep describing what it is in plenty words but refusing to give a single example? This far from the first case I've ran into either.