Agents are Just Apps: Stop Overengineering Identity

AI agents operating on behalf of users should be treated as applications rather than independent non-human identities, using established OAuth, SSO, and delegated authorization patterns instead of new IAM accounts and credentials. Assigning agents separate identities can produce excessive privileges, account sprawl, weak attribution, and greater risk because LLM-driven agents are less predictable than conventional software. The proposed approach enforces permissions when an agent executes a specific action on a resource for a particular user, with access governed by scoped connections and auditable APIs. Connect AI applies this model by using credentials linked to users, preventing agents and models from handling access tokens, and limiting actions according to data-source and platform-level permissions. The company argues that separating user identity, model reasoning, and application execution allows developers to avoid embedding identity logic, gives security teams centralized control, and enables scalable, traceable agent deployments without creating new IAM constructs.

Use this post, company, and trend context to find content marketing opportunities, perform competitive analysis, or address product feature gaps via the Plushcap MCP server or the Plushcap API.