Dex is an OpenID Connect server that connects to other identity providers. Clients use a standards-based OAuth2 flow to login users, while the actual authentication is performed by established user management systems such as Google, GitHub, FreeIPA, etc.
Standards-based token responses allows applications to interact with any OpenID Connect server instead of writing backend specific "access_token" dances. Systems that can already consume ID Tokens issued by dex include:
Dex's main production use is as an auth-N addon in CoreOS's enterprise Kubernetes solution, [Tectonic][tectonic]. Dex runs natively on top of any Kubernetes cluster using Third Party Resources and can drive API server authentication through the OpenID Connect plugin. Clients, such as the [Tectonic Console][tectonic-console] and `kubectl`, can act on behalf users who can login to the cluster through any identity provider dex supports.
More docs for running dex as a Kubernetes authenticator can be found [here](Documentation/kubernetes.md).
