# nathanl/authority

*CURRENTLY UNMAINTAINED*. Authority helps you authorize actions in your Rails app. It's ORM-neutral and has very little fancy syntax; just group your models under one or more Authorizer classes and write plain Ruby methods on them.

Repository: https://github.com/nathanl/authority
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/authority
Language: Ruby
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: ruby, authorization
Archived: true
Last push: 2019-11-18T16:24:23+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 10/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 5290, "days_push": 2480, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases, archived
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1197, forks 68 (observed 2026-08-28T04:03:57.464800+00:00)

## What it is
Authority is a Ruby gem that helps you authorize actions in Rails apps by grouping models under Authorizer classes with plain Ruby methods. It is ORM-neutral and explicitly unmaintained, with a suggested migration path to Pundit.

## Use cases
- authorize user actions in a rails app
- class-level and instance-level permission rules
- organize authorization logic in plain ruby methods
- handle unauthorized actions in controllers
- role-based access control without orm lock-in

## When to choose
- you maintain a legacy Rails app already using Authority
- you want ORM-neutral authorization with minimal syntax

## When to avoid
- starting a new project - it is unmaintained
- you want an actively maintained alternative like Pundit

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: abandoned
- function: authorization, security, middleware
- domain: web-development, security, backend
- platform: ruby
- tags: rails, gem, orm-neutral, unmaintained, access-control, web-server

## Member repositories
- nathanl/authority (main) score 10

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:57.464800+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T06:21:28.446740+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/nathanl/authority (fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:57.464800+00:00, sha 5c8450b10417)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.