Direct answer
What is Sanctum?
- Short definition
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Sanctum usually refers to Laravel Sanctum, a lightweight authentication package for securing SPAs, mobile apps, and simple API token use cases in Laravel applications.
- Why it matters
- Sanctum is often simpler than OAuth when a Laravel app needs secure API access for first-party frontends, mobile apps, or personal access tokens.
How teams use Sanctum
Use this term when you need to describe the practical role it plays in a software project.
Common use cases
- Authenticating a Vue.js single-page app with Laravel
- Securing mobile app API requests
- Creating personal access tokens for trusted users
- Protecting internal tool API endpoints
Examples of Sanctum
These examples show the term in everyday product, platform, or operations work.
Real-world examples
- A Vue dashboard using Sanctum to call protected Laravel routes
- A mobile app storing a token for API access
- A first-party PWA sharing authentication with the Laravel backend