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Generally this spec is talking about the kind of passkeys that are stored in password managers, not the kinds used by hardware security keys. Those in a password manager have always been technically copyable somehow, there just wasn't a standard format or protocol for doing so.

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I knew that "passkey" had grown to refer to a set of different things. I can't say this upsets me, as it does sound like progress over the old status quo. Still, is confusing for those of us that bought in at the beginning.

The terminology is definitely a mess, but I believe at least “passkey” has never referred to hardware authenticators. Those were usually called “security keys” or similar.

Agree. Passkey should be reserved for credentials that can be synced or exported to different providers, as this is what is most analogous to a password from a user perspective.

There should be a different standardized term used for hardware bound keys. So users wont get confused.

The Yubico FAQ explains some of the history fairly well: https://www.yubico.com/blog/a-yubico-faq-about-passkeys/

In particular, they distinguish between "copyable" and "hardware-bound" passkeys. They're both passkeys, and can be used wherever passkeys are supported, but only the "hardware-bound" passkeys support attestation.

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