Channels

Scribe speaks your protocol. Pick a channel — LDAP, REST, GraphQL, or MCP — and start querying. All channels share the same query engine, so results are identical regardless of which one you use.

Channel	What it’s for	Status
LDAP	Existing LDAP apps — no code changes needed	Stable
REST	HTTP/JSON for microservices and automation	Stable
GraphQL	Flexible queries for frontends	Stable
MCP	AI coding assistants (Cursor, Claude, VS Code)	Experimental
gRPC	Service mesh and high-throughput pipelines	Roadmap

Not sure? This decision tree walks you through it:

What are you building?

? Existing LDAP app?

LDAP No code changes needed

? AI assistant or coding tool?

MCP Claude, Cursor, VS Code

? Need flexible queries?

GraphQL Query exactly what you need

? Service-to-service or streaming?

gRPC High-performance streaming

REST Simple JSON API

Every channel reads the same data with the same audit trail

LDAP

REST

GraphQL

MCP

Protocol

LDAP v3

HTTP/JSON

HTTP/JSON

HTTP/SSE

Format

BER/ASN.1

JSON

JSON

JSON-RPC

Schema

LDAP attrs

OpenAPI

SDL

Tools

Best for

Legacy apps

Microservices

Frontends

AI assistants

Pagination

Paged results

Cursor

Relay

Limit

All channels share the same query engine and data

Every query passes through the same four-stage pipeline, regardless of channel:

Request

1

Normalize

• Parse query
• Validate syntax
• Map attributes

2

Plan

• Analyze filter
• Choose indexes
• Optimize access

3

Compile

• Generate SQL
• Bind parameters
• Prepare statement

4

Execute

• Run query
• Stream results
• Format response

Response

Same pipeline for LDAP, REST, GraphQL, gRPC, and MCP queries

An LDAP search and a GraphQL query for the same data produce identical results. The channel determines the wire format; the query engine handles everything else.

Authentication. All channels support bearer token authentication. LDAP also supports bind-based authentication with username/password or proxy authorization.

Authorization. Permissions are evaluated at the directory level during query execution, not per-channel.

Pagination. Each channel uses pagination native to its protocol:

Channel	Style	Parameters
LDAP	Simple Paged Results, VLV	LDAP controls
REST	Cursor pagination	first/after, last/before, limit
GraphQL	Cursor pagination (Relay)	first/after, last/before
MCP	Cursor pagination	limit/after

Entry identifiers. Every entry can be looked up by GlobalId, UUID, UOID, or DN. All channels accept all formats. See Data Model for details.

Operational attributes. Metadata like entryID, entryUUID, timestamps, and ETags are available on every entry. See Data Model for the full list.

Filters. Queries accept FleX, JSON, SCIM, or LDAP filter syntax. Scribe auto-detects the format.

Temporal references. Time-based parameters support ISO timestamps, durations, relative expressions (now-1h), and natural language (yesterday, last 3 days). See Filters reference.

Errors. All channels share the unified failure model. Errors map to protocol-appropriate responses. See Error Handling.

The /.well-known/api-catalog endpoint provides machine-readable API discovery per RFC 9727. Clients can discover all enabled channels, their base paths, and schema URLs from a single request.

Get channel runtime status (bound ports, enabled channels) at /observe/channels. See Endpoints Reference for response details.

For configuration options, see Configuration Reference.