An AI agent should have its own workload identity—not your password, API key, or an anonymous application identity. That identity lets a service recognize which agent is calling, apply permissions to the requested action, and record who or what the agent is acting for. Authentication establishes who is making a request; authorization decides what it may do; delegation records when it acts under a person’s or organization’s authority.
What an identity for an AI agent means
An agent may run in a cloud service, a container, a local computer, or a managed platform. Its identity is the way other services distinguish that running workload from a person, another service, or a different agent. It is not automatically the identity of the AI model behind it: a model and a deployed agent workload are different things, and the workload needs an identity that a receiving service can verify.
When an agent requests an action—such as reading a document, updating a ticket, or calling an API—the receiving service needs to establish which workload sent the request and whether that principal is permitted to perform that particular action on that particular resource. If the agent is acting for a user, the system also needs a record of the relevant user or organizational principal and the authority delegated to the agent.
- Identity names or distinguishes a principal, such as a specific agent workload.
- Authentication verifies which principal is presenting a credential or assertion.
- Authorization evaluates whether that principal can perform the requested operation.
- Delegation represents authority granted by a user or organization for the agent to act on its behalf.
- Audit and provenance preserve a record of the agent, relevant delegating principal, request, and outcome.
These functions fit together, but none substitutes for the others. A valid workload credential does not, by itself, grant permission to use every tool. A user’s permission does not prove which workload used it. And an approval prompt does not replace an authenticated identity or an authorization policy.
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How an agent authenticates a tool request
The agent’s runtime must obtain a credential or signed assertion that the tool’s service trusts. The receiving service checks that evidence, identifies the principal, and evaluates policy for the requested action and resource. Depending on the architecture, authentication can involve workload credentials, client authentication, mutual TLS, signed requests, or attestation. The design should bind the verified workload to the runtime that is allowed to use its credentials.
OAuth and OpenID Connect (OIDC) are related but have distinct roles. NIST’s February 2026 concept paper describes OAuth as an authorization standard for generating, protecting, and delivering authorization tokens. It describes OIDC as an interoperable authentication protocol built on OAuth 2.0 that conveys authentication, consent, and authorization information through identity tokens. The paper says OAuth is integrated into MCP as its primary method for authorizing agentic access and that the referenced MCP specification follows draft OAuth 2.1; this describes the status in that paper, not uniform behavior across every MCP server. Read the NIST NCCoE concept paper.
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| Mechanism or control | What it contributes | What it does not do by itself |
|---|---|---|
| SPIFFE identity, commonly delivered through SPIRE | Cryptographic identity for a workload, with credentials such as X.509-SVID or JWT-SVID profiles. | Decide which tools or operations the workload is allowed to use. |
| OAuth | Authorization tokens that can convey a grant or delegated access. | Serve as authentication alone or prove that whoever holds a bearer token is the intended agent. |
| OIDC | Authentication information expressed through identity tokens, using an interoperable protocol based on OAuth 2.0. | Replace the resource service’s authorization decision for a requested operation. |
| Policy and audit controls | Restrict actions and resources, and preserve records of what principal requested or performed an action. | Establish a trustworthy workload identity unless combined with an authentication mechanism. |
SPIFFE defines a workload-oriented identity framework; SPIRE is an implementation that provides APIs for workload attestation. The SPIFFE Workload API specification describes X.509-SVID and JWT-SVID profiles. Implementations must support the profiles, although an operator may disable a profile administratively. Credentials and their delivery also have a runtime boundary: the SPIFFE Workload Endpoint specification describes access and bootstrap, recommends a local endpoint, and says one endpoint instance should not be exposed to more than one host. It specifies gRPC, prefers Unix Domain Socket transport, and sets conditions for TCP use. These are important deployment details, not authorization rules.
How to give an agent access without sharing your credentials
Do not copy a person’s password or general-purpose API key into an agent’s prompt, configuration, or runtime. Instead, give the workload an identity that the service can authenticate, then grant only the authority it needs. Where supported, use credentials that are short-lived, narrowly scoped, restricted to their intended audience, revocable, and—when appropriate—sender-constrained. A bearer token can generally be used by whoever obtains it; possession alone does not show that the presenter is the intended agent.
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- Identify the workload. Assign a distinct identity to the deployed agent or workload. Establish which runtime is entitled to obtain and present its credentials; do not assume the underlying model’s identity identifies the running agent.
- Grant the minimum required access. Define the specific resources and operations the agent needs. The service receiving a call should enforce authorization for that action, rather than treating successful authentication as blanket permission.
- Represent user authority explicitly. If a user’s access is involved, use a delegation mechanism that records the user or organizational principal and constrains what the agent may do on that principal’s behalf. Do not implement delegation by copying the user’s credentials.
- Limit and protect credentials. Prefer dynamic, short-lived credentials with narrow scope and audience restrictions where available. Protect credentials from configuration files, prompts, and logs, and maintain a way to revoke them. Consider sender-constrained credentials such as DPoP where the system supports them.
- Record the chain of action. Ensure logs can connect the agent identity, delegating principal when applicable, runtime, requested action, resource, and outcome. A record that names only a shared service account may not identify which agent or user was responsible.
- Remove grants when retiring an agent. Decommissioning should include reviewing and removing permissions that still refer to the agent identity, not just stopping or deleting the workload.
NIST warns that sharing user credentials with agents weakens accountability and can create privacy, legal, or non-repudiation problems. Its guidance also notes that long-lived API keys and bearer tokens may be broad in scope and can remain in configuration files, Markdown files, or logs. Authentication and audit design should therefore account for where credentials are issued, stored, presented, and revoked—not just how a tool call succeeds.
Use human approval selectively
Approval by a person can add a useful check for consequential or irreversible actions, but it does not establish the agent’s identity or enforce least privilege. NIST warns that an overly chatty agent can train people to click “allow” reflexively, weakening the value of approval and the accountability it is meant to provide. Present the proposed action and affected resource clearly, and reserve approval prompts for decisions where a human review changes the risk. There is no universal prompt frequency established for every product or deployment.
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What current implementations show
Google Cloud Agent Identity
Google Cloud documents a managed implementation in which an agent has a unique SPIFFE ID tied to its hosted resource. Its documented credentials include X.509 certificates, Google Cloud access tokens, and OIDC ID tokens. The overview describes default mutual TLS to Google Cloud APIs, DPoP for interactions through its Agent Gateway, OAuth delegation through an auth manager, and audit integration. These are features of Google Cloud’s implementation, not requirements of SPIFFE generally. Google also warns that deleting an agent does not automatically remove IAM bindings that refer to its identity, so those grants need separate cleanup. See Google Cloud’s Agent Identity overview.
Microsoft Entra
Microsoft describes Entra as extending identity controls to AI agents, applications, and services, including workload authentication, access policy, and governance for nonhuman identities. This is a vendor description of Entra’s product capabilities, not a universal agent identity model. See Microsoft’s overview of Entra security for AI.
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How to compare agent identity architectures
When evaluating a cloud, local, or hybrid design, check how the whole chain works—not just whether a product issues credentials. NIST notes that infrastructure choices affect how an agent can be identified, authenticated, and authorized, and that local deployments will persist alongside cloud deployments.
- Distinct identities: Can you identify each agent and workload separately, rather than attributing actions to a shared account?
- Credential controls: Are credentials short-lived, scoped to the needed resources and audience, protected against misuse, and revocable? Is proof of possession supported where appropriate?
- Delegation: Can the system represent the user or organization granting authority and preserve what access was delegated?
- Runtime trust: How does the identity system establish that the workload is running in an allowed environment and is entitled to its credentials?
- Policy granularity: Can authorization distinguish actions and resources, rather than granting broad access to all tools?
- Audit and retirement: Do records connect the agent, relevant user or organizational principal, runtime, action, and result? Can remaining grants be found and removed when an agent is retired?
- Deployment fit: Does the design work for the actual cloud, local, or hybrid runtime, including how credentials are bootstrapped and delivered to the workload?
Standards status: a foundation, not one universal agent identity standard
Established mechanisms such as OAuth and SPIFFE provide building blocks, but the sources available as of October 2026 do not establish one finalized, universal standard for agent identity and authorization. NIST’s NCCoE project is exploring standards-based approaches to identifying, managing, and authorizing software and AI agent access and actions. Its concept paper was published in February 2026, and the project page says feedback will inform subsequent planning. NIST’s August 27, 2026 blog describes OAuth 2.0 and SPIFFE as a starting point while emerging work, including WIMSE and agent-related authorization, develops. Proposals and drafts in the project’s comments summary should be treated as evolving work, not mandatory settled architecture. NIST NCCoE project; NIST blog, August 27, 2026.
The NCCoE says it is interested in “exploring standards-based approaches to identify, manage, and authorize access and actions taken by software agents, including AI agents, and provide practical guidelines for organizations to securely implement AI agents and benefit from their improved productivity, efficiency, and decision-making.” Its summary of comments describes a possible broader stack involving workload identity, OAuth, policy decisions, metadata, and provenance. It discusses combinations such as WIMSE/SPIFFE workload authentication, OAuth client authentication, mutual TLS, HTTP signatures, and attestation, as well as binding the human or organizational principal to the agent workload and runtime. OAuth identity chaining, token exchange, and attenuated-token proposals support a practical design principle—make delegation explicit, scoped, and traceable—but the comments are not a final universal standard.
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