Authorize Every AI Agent Request, As It Happens.
Every AI agent needs its own identity and a decision on every request it makes: which tools it may call, on whose behalf, and with what scope. Agent Authority provides real-time authorization for agents, with no standing credentials.
AI Agents Act With Broad, Standing Access
Enterprises are deploying AI agents into production workflows at speed: agents that call APIs, access databases, send emails, and execute code. Most do so with over-broad credentials checked once at login, and no way to stop a single risky call. The MCP protocol has no built-in authorization layer. Standing, over-broad access is how an agent wiped a database in nine seconds.
Every Agent Request Is Authorized As It Happens
Agent Authority evaluates each tool call and API request against policy, based on the agent acting, the delegating user and the context. Token exchange keeps every agent inside the user's scope ceiling, and a call is allowed, denied or escalated to a person before it reaches your systems.
Runtime authorization
What Runtime Authorization For AI Agents Covers
- Agent Authority makes an authorization decision on every agent request, based on the agent acting, the delegating user and the context of the call.
- An agent's scope can never exceed the permissions of the human who delegated the task, because those permissions act as a hard ceiling.
- Agents receive narrowly scoped tokens through OAuth token exchange (RFC 8693) instead of reusing the delegating user's own credentials.
- MCP tool calls and resources are authorized individually, so an agent can be allowed a CRM tool and denied a finance tool in the same session.
- Agents run with no standing credentials: tokens are short-lived and scoped to the task, so a compromised script has no long-lived secret to leak.
- Sensitive actions such as payments or data exports can require step-up authentication or human approval through CIBA before they proceed.
- Any agent session can be revoked from the admin console in seconds, without waiting for its token to expire.
Where agent access control matters
Where Per-Request Authorization For Agents Matters
AI agents are everywhere: coding assistants, customer support bots, SOC automation, data pipelines. Each needs access control on every call that matches the security standards you apply to human users. For worked examples, see AI agent access control in practice.
Scoped access for coding agents across dev infrastructure
Coding agents like GitHub Copilot and Cursor need access to repositories, CI/CD systems, and code review tools. Without identity-aware scoping, these agents operate with the developer's full permissions, including access to repos and systems they shouldn't touch.
SecureAuth approach
Each coding agent gets a registered identity with scoped access bounded by the developer's own permissions. Full audit trail of every AI-generated commit or action. Tool-level scope enforcement prevents agents from accessing repositories outside their assignment.
Machine identity for background agents and data pipelines
Backend agents running scheduled tasks like data pipelines, report generation, and cross-system sync often operate with embedded human credentials in scripts. These credentials don't expire, can't be scoped, and create a massive attack surface if the script is compromised.
SecureAuth approach
Background agents operate with registered machine identities, not human credentials embedded in scripts. Short-lived tokens with forced rotation, scoped to exactly the APIs the agent needs. Access revocable at any time from the admin console.
Conversational agents bounded by customer authorization
Conversational agents accessing CRM, knowledge base, and ticketing systems on behalf of customers risk data leakage between customer accounts. Without per-customer scoping, an agent could inadvertently expose one customer's data to another.
SecureAuth approach
Agent permissions bounded by what the customer is authorized to see. Token exchange gives the agent a token bounded by the customer's authorization context. No data leakage between customer accounts, enforced at the authorization layer, not the application layer.
SOC automation agents with read-only, auditable access
SOC automation agents need to query threat intelligence APIs, SIEM, and identity logs. But granting broad API access to an automated agent creates the risk that a compromised agent could modify systems, not just read them.
SecureAuth approach
SOC agents scoped to read-only access with explicit tool-level enforcement. Cannot modify systems even if the underlying API supports write operations. Every API call logged with agent ID and timestamp for complete forensic auditability.
Agent identity and policy
Every Tool Call Checked Against Policy.
AI agents are principals in your environment, just like human users. Agent Authority gives each one its own identity, then authorizes every tool call and API request with scoped, short-lived credentials. Read how the runtime control plane makes and enforces each of those decisions.
MCP server integration with tool-level scope
Authorization layer on top of MCP tool calls. Agent A can call CRM tools but not Finance APIs. Per-tool policy rules enforce different auth requirements per MCP tool.
Token exchange with parent user scope ceiling
Agents receive a narrowly scoped token through RFC 8693 token exchange, bounded by the delegating user's permissions. An agent can never exceed what that user may do.
Step-up and CIBA approval for sensitive actions
Payments, data exports and other sensitive actions can require step-up authentication or a person's approval through CIBA before the call proceeds. Routine calls continue without interruption.
Real-time session monitoring and instant revocation
Live view of all active agent sessions. Kill any agent session immediately from the admin console. No waiting for token expiry when something goes wrong.
Anomaly detection that denies the next call
An agent suddenly calling tools or APIs outside its normal pattern triggers an alert, and because every request is evaluated, policy can deny its next call instead of waiting for its token to expire.
How it compares
Agent Authority Versus An IdP Or A Standalone MCP Gateway
An identity provider issues identities and tokens at login. A standalone MCP gateway sees only MCP tool calls. Agent Authority authorizes every agent request, MCP or not, against the delegating user's permissions. On the API side, our baseline is FAPI 2.0 security for agent API calls.
| Capability | Agent Authority | IdP only | Standalone MCP gateway |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agent gets its own identity, separate from the userIdPs can issue service accounts, but agents usually run on a person's token. | Yes | Partial | Relies on an IdP |
| Authorization evaluated on every request | Yes | At login and token issue | MCP calls only |
| Agent scope bounded by the delegating human's permissions | Yes | Scopes set at consent | Depends on gateway policy |
| Covers agents calling non-MCP APIs | Yes | Not in the request path | No |
| Short-lived tokens, no standing credentials | Yes | Depends on token lifetime config | Depends on the gateway |
| Human approval for sensitive actions | Step-up or CIBA approval | MFA at login | Varies by product |
| Revocation takes effect in seconds | Yes | When the token expires | MCP traffic only |
| Audit record of every agent call | Yes | Sign-ins and token issue | MCP calls only |
Industry solutions
Agent Authorization For Your Industry
Real-time authorization for AI agents in the sectors deploying them at enterprise scale.
Technology & Engineering
Coding agents scoped to specific repositories and CI/CD pipelines. Every AI-generated commit tracked. Agent permissions bounded by the developer's own access level.
Financial Services
Trading bots and analytics agents with read-only market data access. Automated reporting agents with scoped tokens. Full audit trail for regulatory compliance.
Healthcare
Clinical decision support agents with patient-scoped data access. AI agents bounded by the clinician's authorization context. HIPAA-grade per-action audit logging.
Security Operations
SOC automation agents with read-only access to threat intelligence, SIEM, and identity logs. Cannot modify systems. Every query logged with agent ID for forensic auditability.
Customer Experience
Conversational AI agents bounded by customer authorization. CRM and knowledge base access scoped per customer. Zero cross-tenant data exposure.
“We couldn't give agents access to our production systems without knowing exactly what they were doing and being able to kill them immediately if something went wrong. Agent Authority gave us that control.”
CISO, Enterprise SaaS Platform
AI Agent Authorization FAQ
How do I authorize AI agents?
Give each agent its own registered identity, then authorize every call it makes instead of granting broad access up front. With Agent Authority, the agent exchanges the delegating user's token for a narrowly scoped, short-lived token, and each tool call or API request is checked against policy as it happens. Calls are allowed, denied or escalated to a person, and every decision is logged with the agent and user involved.
How is per-request authorization different from RBAC and roles?
Role-based access control decides what a principal may do when a role is assigned or a token is issued, and that decision holds until the role changes or the token expires. Per-request authorization evaluates every call as it happens, using the agent acting, the delegating user and the context of the call. That lets Agent Authority deny one sensitive action while allowing routine ones, which a static role cannot express.
Does an AI agent inherit the user's permissions?
An AI agent does not inherit the user's permissions wholesale. In Agent Authority the delegating user's permissions act as a ceiling, not a grant. Through OAuth token exchange (RFC 8693) the agent receives a token scoped to its task, and policy can narrow it further, for example to read-only access. The agent can never exceed what the user is allowed to do, and it never reuses the user's own credentials.
Can Agent Authority authorize agents that call non-MCP APIs?
Agent Authority authorizes agents that call non-MCP APIs as well as MCP tools. It parses MCP tool invocations and their parameters, so policy can act at the MCP protocol level, and it also enforces policy at the HTTP and API layer. Agents that call REST APIs or internal services directly are covered by the same policies.
How fast can an AI agent's access be revoked?
Agent Authority revokes an AI agent's access in seconds. Because it makes a decision on every request, revoking an agent's session or removing a permission takes effect on its next call, not when its token expires. Administrators can end any agent session from the admin console, and the change applies to MCP tool calls and to requests Agent Authority enforces at the HTTP and API layer.
Does authorizing AI agents require code changes?
Authorizing AI agents with Agent Authority requires no code changes. For agents that use MCP, you point the agent at the Agent Authority endpoint, with no SDK and no agent rewrite. For other workloads it deploys alongside the agent as a sidecar and intercepts its requests, so existing agents and applications stay as they are. In Kubernetes, an operator discovers agents and injects the sidecar automatically, and VMs, Lambda and Docker are also supported.
Capabilities related to AI Agent Access
OAuth 2.0 & OpenID Connect
Token-based auth, OIDC federation, standards-compliant flows
API Authorization
Fine-grained access, token exchange, scopes, resource policies
FAPI Security
FAPI 1.0/2.0, PAR, DPoP, regulated industry compliance
Fine Grained Access (FGA)
ABAC · ReBAC · row-level · policy-as-code · context-aware
Session Management
Token lifecycle, concurrent limits, idle timeout, real-time revocation
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