The uncomfortable part of building for agents is that the old assumptions quietly stop holding. There is no browser to redirect, no person to read a consent screen at the moment it matters, and no obvious place to put the word "no".
This piece walks through how we think about it at Paycux, what we have changed our minds about, and where the sharp edges are.
What "AI identity" actually maps to in your IAM system
What "AI identity" actually maps to in your IAM system deserves its own treatment. An agent's credential should describe what it may do, not who owns it. Scope it to the narrowest set of operations that make the task possible, bind it to a single principal, and give it a lifetime measured in minutes rather than days.
Consent is the part most implementations get wrong. Asking once at install time and then acting indefinitely is not consent; it is a standing grant with no expiry and no visibility.
The controls worth shipping this quarter
That brings us to the controls worth shipping this quarter. An agent's credential should describe what it may do, not who owns it. Scope it to the narrowest set of operations that make the task possible, bind it to a single principal, and give it a lifetime measured in minutes rather than days.
Consent is the part most implementations get wrong. Asking once at install time and then acting indefinitely is not consent; it is a standing grant with no expiry and no visibility.
- Scope every agent credential to one principal and one task
- Give tokens minutes of life, not days
- Record which agent acted, under whose authority, on what
- Make revocation a single call that takes effect immediately
An agent's credential should describe what it may do, not who owns it.
The actual goal is blast radius, not prevention
That brings us to the actual goal is blast radius, not prevention. Consent is the part most implementations get wrong. Asking once at install time and then acting indefinitely is not consent; it is a standing grant with no expiry and no visibility.
An agent's credential should describe what it may do, not who owns it. Scope it to the narrowest set of operations that make the task possible, bind it to a single principal, and give it a lifetime measured in minutes rather than days.
Where this leaves us
If there is one thing worth taking away, it is that the expensive decisions are the ones made implicitly. Making them on purpose costs an afternoon.
If you are working through the same problem and want to compare notes, the docs cover the mechanics and the console shows the behaviour on your own data.
Everything here, already built
Sign-in, enterprise SSO, directory provisioning, roles and an audit trail behind one API. Start with the quickstart and have a working sign-in this afternoon.