Accounts

Understand connected accounts in Social SDK, how discovery works, what account references contain, and why ownership mapping stays application data.

A connected account is a platform identity a backend can act as: an X user, a Threads profile, a YouTube channel, a LinkedIn organization. Every operation in Social SDK is scoped to one.

Accounts belong to a backend

An account record lives on the route that produced it. A direct adapter’s account comes from your own credentials; a hosted platform’s account is a provider record. The same human on the same platform through two backends is two distinct connected accounts, and nothing transfers between them automatically.

Discover, then select

List accounts from the configured backend instead of constructing identities from user input:

const page = await social.accounts.list({ backend: "default" });
for (const account of page.items) {
  console.log(account.ref.platform, account.ref.accountId, account.displayName);
}

Direct adapters return the single account their credentials are configured for, after checking that the platform reports the same identity. A LinkedIn member token can administer several organizations; the LinkedIn native module lists them so you can configure one backend per organization. See LinkedIn.

Discovery tells you what the credential can act as. It does not prove a frontend-selected handle belongs to the current tenant; that mapping is application data.

The account reference

Operations take a connectedAccountRef, a JSON-safe locator naming the backend instance, platform, and account ID:

const account = connectedAccountRef({
  backend: "default",
  platform: "x",
  accountId: "12345",
});

References detect routing mistakes: an account bound to one backend is rejected by another. They are not secrets and not authorization; see Authorization.

Ownership is application data

Map each connected account to the tenants allowed to use it, in your own storage, at connection time. Check that mapping before every account-scoped operation and again when webhook events reference accounts. The connect accounts guide covers the staged connection flow, credential storage, and recovery.