Three ways to let an AI agent call third-party APIs on behalf of a user
Blog post from WorkOS
OAuth credential architecture for agents should be chosen based on where code executes: storing provider access and refresh tokens internally creates significant per-provider security and maintenance responsibilities and is mainly justified for unsupported integrations; fetching tokens at runtime removes storage burdens but still exposes live tokens to trusted application infrastructure; and using WorkOS Pipes Relay keeps tokens out of agent or sandbox environments by proxying requests and injecting credentials server-side. Relay is positioned as the safer option for untrusted, agent-controlled runtimes because such environments may expose secrets through prompts, logs, state, or outbound calls, while direct runtime token access better suits trusted systems handling large uploads, long-running operations, unsupported providers, redirects, or high-volume synchronization work. The approach can be mixed within one product, with Relay for agents and direct provider calls for backend sync jobs, and it can also reduce token-management risks in MCP servers. However, credential location does not determine what an agent is authorized to do, since provider OAuth scopes are often broad; finer-grained agent permissions remain an unresolved policy challenge.
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