There are already plenty of JWT libraries out there. I built this one mostly for myself—to learn, to experiment, and to have something lightweight that fits my workflow without extra bloat.
Honestly? I just wanted to try building one.
It wraps jose with sane defaults, handles expiration with human-readable strings like "2 hours", and auto-manages claims so I don't have to think about iat, nbf, or jti every time. Nothing revolutionary, just convenient.
"15 minutes" or "2 days" instead of calculating seconds.iat, nbf, exp, jti are set by default—override only what you need.HttpError (401) with specific error keys for expired, invalid, or malformed tokens.bun add @nowarajs/jwt @nowarajs/error
Use signJWT to create a token. The third argument accepts numbers, Date objects, or human-readable strings.
import { signJWT } from '@nowarajs/jwt';
// Secret must be at least 32 characters
const secret = 'your-secret-key-at-least-32-chars!';
const token = await signJWT(secret, { userId: '123', role: 'admin' }, '2 hours');
Returns the decoded payload or throws HttpError (401) if invalid/expired.
import { verifyJWT } from '@nowarajs/jwt';
try {
const result = await verifyJWT(token, secret);
console.log('User ID:', result.payload.userId);
} catch (error) {
// HttpError with specific error key
console.log('Token verification failed:', error.message);
}
Validate issuer and audience claims:
import { verifyJWT } from '@nowarajs/jwt';
const result = await verifyJWT(token, secret, {
issuer: 'Core-Issuer',
audience: 'Core-Audience'
});
// Seconds from now
await signJWT(secret, payload, 900);
// Date object
await signJWT(secret, payload, new Date('2026-12-31'));
// Human-readable (my favorite)
await signJWT(secret, payload, '15 minutes');
await signJWT(secret, payload, '1 week');
await signJWT(secret, payload, '30 days');
Override any default claim by including it in your payload:
const token = await signJWT(
'secret',
{
userId: '123',
iss: 'MyApp', // Override issuer
aud: ['web', 'mobile'], // Override audience
sub: 'user-123' // Override subject
},
'1 day'
);
Full docs: nowarajs.github.io/jwt
MIT - Feel free to use it.