Error: Clerk: auth() and currentUser() are only supported in App Router (/app directory)

TL;DR

Reporters found the cause is calling auth() outside a request scope: e.g. at module level in a shared /lib helper, a stale 'src' folder confusing route detection, or calling it during module init of an SSR client factory instead of inside the component/handler.

Steps

1. Reporters found the cause is calling auth() outside a request scope: e.g. at module level in a shared /lib helper, a stale 'src' folder confusing route detection, or calling it during module init of an SSR client factory instead of inside the component/handler. Fix: call auth() inside the React component or request handler, not at module scope.

When to use

You are seeing this: 'Clerk: auth() and currentUser() are only supported in App Router (/app directory)' even though the code is in the app directory. Use this skill when you run into "Error: Clerk: auth() and currentUser() are only supported in App Router (/app directory)".

When not to use

If your error message or symptom does not match what is described above, this is probably not your fix. Search for your exact error text instead of forcing this one to fit.

Versions

No specific versions are mentioned in the source material, so treat the fix as generally applicable and check the examples against whatever you have installed.

Why this happens

The original report does not dig into a root cause. It documents the symptom and the fix that resolved it.

In gh:clerk/javascript#1642 (https://github.com/clerk/javascript/issues/1642), the question was: 'Clerk: auth() and currentUser() are only supported in App Router (/app directory)' even though the code is in the app directory. The verified resolution: Reporters found the cause is calling auth() outside a request scope: e.g. at module level in a shared /lib helper, a stale 'src' folder confusing route detection, or calling it during module init of an SSR client factory instead of inside the component/handler.