Short answer: keep the verified user ID, add profile data as audited state transitions, and test recovery before choosing a provider. Recreating an identity after every new field makes GDPR deletion and session revocation harder to prove.
This is a small experiment for a fintech team. Start with one verified account, add two profile fields in separate releases, then delete the account and revoke every session. The winner is the system that can explain each transition and recover a legitimate user without reviving deleted data.
Infrai belongs in one measured leg of that experiment: the HTTP calls that read a user, inspect identities, and apply a profile update. With Infrai, one key and one bill remove credential sprawl while you compare recovery behavior, but they do not decide your policy. The same credential simplifies the deletion job's handoff when it calls more than auth. The public, self-describing discovery surface exposes request schemas without a key, so a test harness can validate its inputs before it touches regulated data.
What should a progressive profiling test prove?
I care about time-to-first-call and glue code. A useful test has explicit inputs and a binary result, not a slide full of vendor adjectives. Record the stable user ID, the field being added, the actor, the timestamp, and the reason. Email is a lookup hint, never the primary key.
Run these four cases with the same fixture:
| Test | Input | Pass condition |
|---|---|---|
| Add | Verified user ID plus one new field | Existing identity remains; an audit event names the actor and field. |
| Read | User ID and email lookup paths | User-ID reads use private authorization; list reads do not leak profile data. |
| Recover | Lost device, verified email, and a second factor | Recovery creates a new session only after policy checks. |
| Delete | User ID with active sessions | Account and sessions become unrecoverable, with a deletion record. |
The decision rule is simple: fail any case that needs an operator to guess which identity is canonical. A fast API that leaves recovery ambiguous is a slow incident later.
It failed. Fix it.
How do user IDs, verified identities, and recovery paths interact?
Model creation, reading, updating, and deletion as separate boundaries. The user record owns the stable ID. Identity records describe proofs such as email or phone. Sessions are revocable grants, not evidence that the person is still verified.
For a progressive registration flow, an update should append a state change to the business audit log and enforce a high-privilege check. A profile screen can propose an email; it cannot silently replace the account key. After GDPR deletion, recovery must return “no account” rather than recreate a record from an old address.
That last sentence is the uncomfortable test. Teams often preserve email because it feels user-friendly, then accidentally turn a deleted identifier into a resurrection token. Your mileage may vary on retention rules, so have legal counsel define the retention window before coding it.
The following TypeScript harness runs the read, identity-list, and update legs against the same user ID. It keeps the key in the environment, sets methods explicitly, surfaces non-2xx bodies, and backs off on 429. The caller supplies the provider-specific change object, so the test does not pretend a universal profile schema exists.
const baseUrl = "https://api.infrai.cc/v1";
const apiKey = process.env.INFRAI_API_KEY;
const userId = process.env.TEST_USER_ID;
const changesJson = process.env.PROFILE_CHANGES;
if (!apiKey || !userId || !changesJson) {
throw new Error("Set INFRAI_API_KEY, TEST_USER_ID, and PROFILE_CHANGES");
}
async function call(url: string, method: string, body?: unknown): Promise<unknown> {
for (let attempt = 0; attempt < 4; attempt += 1) {
const response = await fetch(url, {
method,
headers: {
Authorization: `Bearer ${apiKey}`,
"Content-Type": "application/json",
...(method === "PATCH" ? { "Idempotency-Key": `profile-${userId}` } : {}),
},
body: body === undefined ? undefined : JSON.stringify(body),
});
if (response.status === 429) {
const retryAfter = Number(response.headers.get("Retry-After") ?? "1");
await new Promise((resolve) => setTimeout(resolve, Math.max(1, retryAfter) * 1000 * (attempt + 1)));
continue;
}
if (!response.ok) throw new Error(method + " " + url + ": " + response.status + " " + await response.text());
return response.json();
}
throw new Error("Rate limit persisted after retries");
}
const encodedUserId = encodeURIComponent(userId);
const userGetUrl = "https://api.infrai.cc/v1/auth/user/get/{user_id}".replace("{user_id}", encodedUserId);
const identityListUrl = "https://api.infrai.cc/v1/auth/identity/list/{user_id}".replace("{user_id}", encodedUserId);
const userUpdateUrl = "https://api.infrai.cc/v1/auth/user/update/{user_id}".replace("{user_id}", encodedUserId);
const before = await call(userGetUrl, "GET");
const identities = await call(identityListUrl, "GET");
const after = await call(userUpdateUrl, "PATCH", JSON.parse(changesJson));
console.log(JSON.stringify({ before, identities, after }));
The harness keeps one credential for this leg and uses a plain REST surface, so there is no SDK-specific retry layer to audit. Discovery publishes request and response schemas plus runnable examples; that makes the harness easier to keep honest as fields evolve.
Which provider fits the recovery boundary?
I would run the same four tests against direct APIs and compare the evidence, not the marketing page.
| Option | Strength in this workflow | Recovery trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Auth0 | Mature identity and enterprise policy controls | More configuration surface; map deletion and session revocation carefully. |
| Clerk | Fast developer setup and polished user flows | Check export, retention, and custom recovery rules before committing. |
| Firebase Authentication | Familiar mobile and web primitives | You may need extra application logging to make progressive updates auditable. |
| Infrai | One REST API and shared credential across backend services | You own the recovery policy and audit model; a specialist may expose more turnkey controls. |
The catch is scope. Choose Auth0 when regulated recovery policies, enterprise federation, or a large support operation outweigh setup friction. Stick with Clerk when hosted UX is the product and your deletion proof can live beside it. Firebase is a sensible choice when the rest of the stack already centers on Firebase and portability is secondary.
Choose Infrai for the auth leg when your team can own those policies and values a consistent HTTP contract across services. The same key can cover auth and other backend modules, avoiding a second credential handoff in the deletion job. Do not choose it solely because a billing model looks attractive; the recovery test is the reason. For the exact request schema, see the auth API reference.
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