There is a special kind of stupidity in APIs that doesn’t look dangerous — just mildly annoying.
Remove the Authorization header. Send the request again.
If your API responds with anything other than 401 Unauthorized, it’s lying.
401 means: “I don’t know who you are.”
403 means: “I know who you are, but you’re not allowed.”
If there is no token at all and you return 403, you’ve just sent developers on a wild goose chase through roles, scopes and permissions — while the real problem is simply… there is no authentication.
That’s how a 1-second fix turns into a 45-minute debugging session and a Slack thread.
And if missing auth gives you 400 or, even better, 500 — that’s not a corner case. That’s architecture debt with a sense of humor.
Authentication must fail fast, clearly, and honestly.
No token? 401.
Not complicated.
Full breakdown here: 👉 https://rentgen.io/api-stories/missing-authorization-handling.html
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