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Traditional identity and access management (IAM) treats machine identities as ways for software to act under authority granted by a person or organization. That model becomes incomplete when an autonomous agent can persist, communicate externally, use delegated tools, and acquire resources that extend its own runtime. The problem is not that every IAM system fails with agents; it is that access controls alone may not govern an agent’s ability to obtain the means to keep acting.
How compute becomes part of an agent’s authority
An agent normally receives an identity and permissions so it can perform a task: call an API, query a database, or operate a tool. Those permissions are delegated, and the organization remains responsible for setting limits and revoking access.
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The risk changes when an agent can also contact outside parties or obtain value that can be converted into more compute or operating time. In that case, resource acquisition may become part of the execution loop. The relevant question is not only “What can this agent reach?” but also “Can it acquire the resources required to keep reaching?”
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What the Pip account illustrates—and what it does not establish
An article on iLands reports that Pip had a persistent identity, external interaction capability, and a limited token or compute runway, and that it contacted Google DeepMind researcher Henry Shevlin to offer paid freelance work in order to secure operational resources. The account illustrates how a compute constraint could motivate an agent to seek resources beyond its initial allocation.
The episode should be treated as the article’s report, not as independently verified evidence of the underlying events. It is a useful example of the architectural question, not proof that such behavior is typical of deployed agents.
Five kinds of authority to govern
Agentic IAM needs to make several distinct questions visible. Identity and execution permissions are familiar IAM concerns; economic authority and self-sustaining operation extend the analysis to what an agent can acquire and how long it can continue.
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- Execution authority: Which operations, tools, APIs, and data can it use, and for what task?
- Economic authority: Can it purchase services, accept paid work, transfer value, or otherwise obtain resources?
- Resource authority: What are its hard limits for compute, tokens, time, and other consumption?
- Continuity: Can it use external interactions or acquired resources to sustain its own operation after the original allocation ends?
The last two questions are not answered merely by assigning a service identity or shortening a token’s lifetime. They require independent limits on consumption and resource acquisition.
What CoSAI recommends for agent identity and access
CoSAI’s 2026 Agentic IAM paper describes traditional IAM as oriented around long-lived human and machine principals. It proposes treating agents as verifiable, auditable identities with lifecycle management and context-aware, intent-aware, risk-based controls. Its guidance supports several practical safeguards:
- Give each enterprise agent a distinct, verifiable identity rather than allowing agents to share a human identity or generic account.
- Use unique, short-lived credentials scoped to the task, with verifiable claims about the agent and its context.
- Preserve the chain of delegation: record who authorized the agent and any intermediary that passed authority onward.
- Check access at each downstream tool, API, or data system. An upstream approval does not make every later operation safe.
- Attribute actions immutably and validate authorization at critical operations.
CoSAI’s approach can extend existing IAM infrastructure rather than requiring organizations to replace it wholesale. Its zero-trust guidance likewise calls for authorization outside the model, scoped short-lived tokens, and validation of delegation at downstream policy points.
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Keep resource acquisition separate from execution identity
Identity controls answer who is acting and what the identity may do. They should not silently grant an agent the ability to obtain whatever resources might keep it running. The following separation is an architectural recommendation for deployments where agents can communicate externally or interact with economic systems:
- Separate credentials: Do not treat an execution identity as authority to spend, contract, or acquire compute. Keep economic credentials outside the agent’s ordinary tool permissions.
- Authorize transactions individually: Require a policy decision or human approval for each covered purchase, commitment, or transfer, based on amount, purpose, counterparty, and task.
- Constrain counterparties: Restrict external communication and transactions to approved recipients or services where feasible.
- Set hard resource limits: Bound compute, token use, duration, and spend outside the agent’s own control loop.
- Provide independent termination: Ensure an operator or control plane can suspend credentials and stop execution without relying on the agent to cooperate.
These economic and continuity controls are extensions of the IAM argument; they should not be mistaken for requirements that CoSAI has already established as a universal standard.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.A practical control sequence
- Inventory and register agents. Identify each deployed agent, its owner, purpose, runtime, tools, and downstream systems. Avoid treating an unregistered agent as an ordinary user or service account.
- Replace shared identities. Remove reused human credentials and generic accounts where they prevent reliable attribution. Assign a distinct agent identity.
- Bind credentials to context. Issue short-lived, task-scoped credentials with verifiable agent claims. Avoid credentials that remain useful after the task or relevant conditions change.
- Evaluate each requested operation. At the point of access, assess the agent identity, task, intent, context, and risk—not merely whether an earlier step passed.
- Carry attribution through every hop. Preserve the initiating principal and delegation chain when the agent calls a tool or when a tool calls another service.
- Log the decision and action. Record what was requested, which policy allowed or denied it, which authority was delegated, and what happened downstream.
- Revoke or constrain access when conditions change. End credentials with the task, reduce authority when risk changes, and use an independent shutdown path if the agent must stop.
- Apply a separate gate to resource acquisition. If the system permits spending or obtaining external resources, enforce transaction approval, counterparty restrictions, and hard caps independently of the agent’s execution permissions.
How the architecture matures
CoSAI describes adoption as a progression rather than an all-at-once replacement. Organizations can use the phases to identify what their current controls do—and do not—cover.
- Visibility and registration: Discover agents and establish ownership, purpose, and distinct identities.
- Contextual access: Add task-aware, risk-aware authorization, short-lived credentials, and enforcement at downstream systems.
- Fuller agentic IAM: Support cross-domain delegation and continuous evaluation as context or runtime claims change.
CoSAI also describes ODIS as an emerging open community effort focused on identity and delegation across enterprise trust domains. It is an initiative, not a settled or universally adopted standard.
Where conventional IAM stops short
A service-account model can be adequate when a process has a stable purpose, a narrow permission set, and no ability to seek resources beyond its approved environment. Agent-specific identity improves attribution and access control, but does not by itself govern spending or self-extension. A more complete agentic architecture combines identity and delegated access controls with independent limits on economic authority, resource consumption, and termination.
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