What it means
absent, malformed, unknown, expired or revoked credential; also the uniform sign-in answer and the dead-session answer.
How to handle it
Obtain a valid credential and sign in again; do not use this response to distinguish why authentication failed.
Wire contract
| Code | invalid_credentials |
|---|---|
| Class | authentication |
| HTTP status | 401 |
| Meta keys | None |
| Raised | Yes |
The response uses the standard {"error": {…}} envelope. Branch on error.code, not the human-readable message. Preserve request_id when reporting a failure.