# trusted-publishing

Source: https://startwithidentity.com/glossary/trusted-publishing/
Last updated: 2026-10-16
License: content by Start with Identity. Cite the source URL.

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Trusted publishing is a way to publish packages to a registry such as npm or PyPI from a CI/CD workflow without a stored API token: the workflow presents a short-lived OpenID Connect (OIDC) identity token from its CI provider, and the registry exchanges it for a short-lived publish credential if it matches a publisher configuration the maintainer registered.

On [PyPI](https://docs.pypi.org/trusted-publishers/) the resulting API token is valid for 15 minutes; [npm](https://docs.npmjs.com/trusted-publishers/) supports GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD and CircleCI (npm CLI 11.5.1 or later) and adds provenance attestations automatically for public packages published from GitHub or GitLab. It removes the long-lived publish token that worms such as Shai-Hulud harvest from laptops and CI, but the trust is only as good as the identifier the configuration binds to. In October 2026 Bloom Security's [SlugFest research](https://startwithidentity.com/blog/2026-10-13-npm-trusted-publishing-slugfest-let-reclaimed-repo-names-publish-packages/) showed npm matched repositories by owner and name until the first publish, so anyone who reclaimed a renamed or deleted repository name could mint publish credentials for more than 1,500 packages. Maintainers should publish once right after creating a binding, review bindings after any rename or transfer, and remove them before deleting a repository.

See also: [workload identity federation](https://startwithidentity.com/glossary/workload-identity-federation/), [OIDC](https://startwithidentity.com/glossary/oidc/), [secrets in repositories and CI](https://startwithidentity.com/techniques/secrets-in-repositories-and-ci/), [Shai-Hulud reaches the Tensorlake npm SDK](https://startwithidentity.com/blog/2026-10-08-shai-hulud-reaches-tensorlake-npm-sdk-with-a-token-revocation-wiper/)