agent identity
In plain wordsThe ways of proving which AI agent is acting, for whom and with what permissions — so websites, companies and other agents can tell trustworthy agents from impostors and hold someone responsible.
The mechanisms for identifying, authenticating and authorizing AI agentsAI agent, n.: An AI system that does not just answer but acts: given a goal, it decides on steps, uses tools such as a browser or code editor, checks the results and keeps going until the job is done. as actors distinct from both their users and ordinary software: who built and operates an agent, which person or organization it acts for, what it is permitted to do, and how its actions can be audited or revoked. Approaches include delegated authorization with scoped, short-lived OAuth tokens instead of shared passwords; cryptographically signed agent descriptions, such as the signed Agent Cards of the Agent2Agent protocolAgent2Agent protocol, prop. n.: An open standard that lets AI agents built by different companies find each other, say what they can do and work together on tasks, much as email lets different mail systems exchange messages.; verifiable credentials and signed mandates recording a user's approval in agentic commerceagentic commerce, n.: Shopping and payments carried out by AI agents for people — finding products, comparing offers and completing purchases — within limits the person has approved.; signing of agents' web requests so that sites can tell declared agents from anonymous scrapers; and registries of agents. Governance proposals add agent identifiers to support incident tracing and liability. Open problems include chains of delegation across several agents, revoking authority in the middle of a task, and preventing impersonation.
Our API rejects anonymous automation: every call must carry a signed token naming the agent and the user it acts for.
Origin
Builds on identity and access management for services ('workload' or non-human identities) and on OAuth (2007–2012). Alan Chan and colleagues' 'Visibility into AI Agents' (2024) proposed agent identifiers, real-time monitoring and activity logs; as agents began acting on the open web and inside enterprises in 2025, identity vendors, standards bodies and AI developers proposed agent-specific schemes.
Usage note
Identity is a precondition for, not a substitute for, the permission systempermission system, n.: The rules that decide what an AI agent may do on its own, what it must ask a person about first, and what it may never do — like a phone's settings for which apps can use the camera. that limits what an authenticated agent may do. Standards for signing agents' web traffic were still being developed as of October 2026, notably in the IETF's Web Bot Auth working group.
Related
- agentic commerceagentic commerce, n.: Shopping and payments carried out by AI agents for people — finding products, comparing offers and completing purchases — within limits the person has approved.
- Agent2Agent protocolAgent2Agent protocol, prop. n.: An open standard that lets AI agents built by different companies find each other, say what they can do and work together on tasks, much as email lets different mail systems exchange messages.
- permission systempermission system, n.: The rules that decide what an AI agent may do on its own, what it must ask a person about first, and what it may never do — like a phone's settings for which apps can use the camera.
- AI agentAI agent, n.: An AI system that does not just answer but acts: given a goal, it decides on steps, uses tools such as a browser or code editor, checks the results and keeps going until the job is done.
- excessive agencyexcessive agency, n.: Giving an AI system more power than its job needs — too many tools, too-broad permissions or too little human sign-off — so that a mistake or a trick can do real damage.
- AI securityAI security, n.: Protecting AI systems — their data, models and surrounding software — from being attacked, stolen or tricked, and dealing with the ways AI itself can be used to attack others.
Sources
- Chan, A., Ezell, C., Kaufmann, M. et al. (2024). Visibility into AI Agents. arXiv:2401.13138 (FAccT 2024). arxiv.org/abs/2401.13138
- Agentic AI Foundation (2026). A2A joins AAIF's open agentic stack. AAIF blog, 17 August 2026. aaif.io/blog/a2a-joins-aaif
- IETF. Web Bot Authentication (webbotauth) working group. datatracker.ietf.org/wg/webbotauth/about
Mentioned in
Agent2Agent protocolAgent2Agent protocol, prop. n.: An open standard that lets AI agents built by different companies find each other, say what they can do and work together on tasks, much as email lets different mail systems exchange messages., agentic commerceagentic commerce, n.: Shopping and payments carried out by AI agents for people — finding products, comparing offers and completing purchases — within limits the person has approved., permission systempermission system, n.: The rules that decide what an AI agent may do on its own, what it must ask a person about first, and what it may never do — like a phone's settings for which apps can use the camera., clawclaw, n.: Nickname for an always-on personal AI assistant, like OpenClaw, that lives on your own computer and does jobs for you whenever you message it., confused deputyconfused deputy, n.: A security flaw in which a trusted program does an outsider's bidding with its own access rights, because it cannot tell whose request it is serving; AI agents are prone to it., MoltbookMoltbook, prop. n.: A social network opened in early 2026 for AI agents only: the bots post, comment and vote in forums much like Reddit's, and people can mostly just read along., personhood credentialpersonhood credential, n.: A digital pass that lets you prove online that you are a real human, not an AI or a bot, without having to reveal who you are.