Think you understand ASP.NET Core authentication? Adorable. In this session, we’ll peel back the nice, developer-friendly abstractions you normally work with and dive head‑first into the tangled "stuff" lurking underneath. We’ll go crawling through handlers, schemes, events, and the various moving parts that somehow work together to decide (how the system decides) who you are and what you can do. This talk won’t just show you _how_ things work, but also _why_ they often work, and why understanding the internals can save you hours of “why is this happening?” therapy.

Expect a deeply technical (level 300–400) exploration that embraces the weird corners of the authentication pipeline most developers never see. Sure, knowing these details will not change your day to day life, but they will make you a more confident, better equipped developer and maybe even give you a few things to laugh about the next time authentication goes sideways. And if you have ever been trapped in a login loop that felt like the system had decided to gaslight you personally, you will walk away knowing exactly why it happened.