XAA vs. ID-JAG vs. EMA: What's the Difference?

Cross-App Access (XAA) is an identity pattern in which an enterprise identity provider brokers one application’s access to another application’s API or MCP server on a user’s behalf, replacing separate API keys or individual consent flows while leaving final authorization decisions to the resource application. ID-JAG, or Identity Assertion JWT Authorization Grant, is the IETF standards-track draft that defines the associated token exchange: a requesting application trades a user identity token for a short-lived, signed assertion targeted to a specific resource authorization server, which validates it and issues its own access token. Enterprise-Managed Authorization (EMA) is a stable, opt-in Model Context Protocol extension that applies XAA and ID-JAG to let administrators preauthorize MCP clients to connect to MCP servers for their users. Although the terms are often used together, XAA describes the broad access pattern, ID-JAG describes the technical grant and assertion, and EMA describes the MCP-specific administrative capability. EMA governs whether a connection is permitted and at which scopes when the token is issued, while ongoing controls over an agent’s actions remain the responsibility of the resource server through its access-token policies and per-tool or per-scope enforcement.

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