Do AI Agents Inherit User Permissions? Why That Fails

AI agents commonly inherit users’ OAuth tokens or credentials, but this approach is insufficient for securely authorizing individual tool calls because OAuth confirms delegated access rather than whether a specific action is appropriate in a given context. Broad inherited permissions undermine least privilege by allowing agents to retain continuous access, perform actions beyond a narrow task, and chain reads and writes into unapproved side effects. The recommended approach is to give agents distinct identities and roles, preserve the human principal they represent, and calculate effective permissions by intersecting agent privileges, user authority, task context, and resource-level policies. Authorization should be evaluated at runtime for each sensitive tool call, with zero standing privileges, just-in-time capabilities, human approvals for high-risk actions, and detailed decision logs to support auditing and explainability.

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