Edit items (json) without losing passkeys

4 replies
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Just came across this fun notice in the docs: "JSON item templates do not support passkeys. If you use a JSON template to update an item that contains a passkey, the passkey will be overwritten. To fix this, you can restore a previous version of the item." Which mean this method of editing an item is out the window for any items which contain passkeys :(

Want to bump this issue, and also say that perhaps a different kind of programmatic update without needing to pass in the entire json blob could be useful.

Pinned Reply By 1P_Dave

Hello folks!

Thank you all for the feedback! As it’s been noted, JSON item templates indeed do not support passkeys. You can find warning in our docs:

We’ve also added help text to the op item edit command itself to clarify this limitation: NOTE: JSON item templates do not support passkeys. If you use a JSON template to update an item that contains a passkey, the passkey will be overwritten.

When editing items using a JSON template, I recommend only targeting items that you know don’t contain passkeys.

That being said, I’ve shared all of your feedback with our team internally. Hopefully this is something that can be improved up in the future.

-Dave

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Tom

Can't wait for the answer :) Good find!

B

buliwyf

Hit this in practice with op 2.41.1 (macOS). Two things make it worse than the docs note suggests:

There is no way to detect a passkey before editing. op item get --format json does not expose whether a Login item holds a passkey, so a script cannot skip those items. A check for “passkey” in the JSON only matches URLs like …/passkeyLogin.
The overwrite is silent. op item edit (template or piped JSON) returns rc=0 and no warning; the passkey is just gone. I only noticed because Watchtower started listing the affected accounts (Microsoft, GitHub, and others) under “Passkeys available”. Item history did preserve the passkeys, so restoring the previous version fixed it, item by item.

Requests:

Refuse (or require --force) when an edit would drop an existing passkey.
Expose passkey presence in op item get --format json (even just a flag, no key material).
Clarify whether assignment edits such as op item edit <id> --title "…" are safe for passkey items; the docs only mention templates.

1P_DavePinned

1Password Employee

Hello folks!

Thank you all for the feedback! As it’s been noted, JSON item templates indeed do not support passkeys. You can find warning in our docs:

We’ve also added help text to the op item edit command itself to clarify this limitation: NOTE: JSON item templates do not support passkeys. If you use a JSON template to update an item that contains a passkey, the passkey will be overwritten.

When editing items using a JSON template, I recommend only targeting items that you know don’t contain passkeys.

That being said, I’ve shared all of your feedback with our team internally. Hopefully this is something that can be improved up in the future.

-Dave

J

jasonkuhrt

Written by an AI agent (Claude) on behalf of Jason Kuhrt.

One data point on the open question about flag edits: on op 2.42.0, a tags-only edit kept a passkey. I saved a passkey for webauthn.io in 1Password, ran op item edit <id> --tags passkey-test with a service account, then signed in at webauthn.io with that passkey. I haven't tested --title or field assignments.

A piped-JSON edit removed a passkey from our Coinbase login on 2026-11-07; we restored it from item history. Neither op item get --format json for the test login nor @1password/sdk 0.5.0 for the Coinbase login showed any sign of the passkey, so a script can't tell from either response that the item holds one.

+1 to the safeguard requested above: refuse JSON edits that would remove an existing passkey, piped JSON included, and show passkey presence in op item get --format json.

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