Automate Cerbos policy deployments with CircleCI
Push validated Cerbos policies to Cerbos Hub on every merge using a CircleCI workflow.
Workflow-driven
A single config file triggers policy uploads on every push to your main branch
Environment secrets
Store Cerbos Hub credentials as project environment variables, injected securely at runtime
Zero-downtime updates
Cerbos Hub distributes updated bundles to connected PDPs with no restarts or redeployments
How Cerbos works with CircleCI
Authorization policies should go through the same review and deployment rigour as application code. CircleCI lets you automate that workflow so every policy change is tested and deployed without manual steps.
Cerbos Hub stores your compiled policy bundles and distributes them to connected PDP instances. A CI/CD pipeline pushes validated policies to Cerbos Hub on every merge, and your PDPs pick up the changes automatically.
With CircleCI handling the pipeline and Cerbos Hub handling distribution, policy updates flow from pull request to production with a full audit trail and zero downtime.
How to deploy Cerbos policies with CircleCI
- Create a config file, Add
.circleci/config.ymlto your repository with a job that runs the cerbosctl Docker image. - Store credentials as environment variables, Add
CERBOS_HUB_CLIENT_IDandCERBOS_HUB_CLIENT_SECRETin your CircleCI project settings. - Push to main, Every push to main triggers the workflow, which uploads your policies to Cerbos Hub using
hub store replace-files. - PDPs update automatically, Connected PDP instances pull the latest policy bundle from Cerbos Hub with zero downtime.
FAQ
How does the CircleCI workflow deploy policies?
A job runs the cerbosctl Docker image and executes `hub store replace-files` to upload your policy directory to Cerbos Hub. Connected PDP instances pull the updated bundle automatically.
What credentials do I need?
You need a Cerbos Hub client ID and client secret with Read & Write permissions, stored as environment variables in your CircleCI project settings.
Can I restrict deployments to the main branch?
Yes. Use CircleCI workflow filters to run the upload job only on pushes to the main branch, so feature-branch commits skip deployment.
Learn more about Cerbos
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Cerbos + CircleCI
- Policies deployed to Cerbos Hub automatically on every merge via CircleCI
- Connected PDP instances pick up changes with zero downtime
- Policy changes go through the same review process as application code
- Full audit trail from commit to production deployment
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What is Cerbos?
Cerbos is an end-to-end enterprise authorization software for Zero Trust environments and AI-powered systems. It enforces fine-grained, contextual, and continuous authorization across apps, APIs, AI agents, MCP servers, services, and workloads.
Cerbos consists of an open-source Policy Decision Point, Enforcement Point integrations, and a centrally managed Policy Administration Plane (Cerbos Hub) that coordinates unified policy-based authorization across your architecture. Enforce least privilege & maintain full visibility into access decisions with Cerbos authorization.