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A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11For each user, sign the person in with OpenID Connect (OIDC), then authorize every agent action with narrowly scoped OAuth access tokens. Keep three identities separate: the human, the agent or workload, and the OAuth client. Make sure each token is issued for the one resource that receives it. Never forward an MCP client’s token to an upstream API. Get the upstream API its own token, and design approval, revocation and audit in from the start.
The pieces below are mostly established OAuth practice. The agent-specific profile on top of them is still a draft, and this article marks which parts are normative and which are not.
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Authentication and authorization are separate jobs
NIST describes OIDC as an authentication protocol built on OAuth specifications and as a way to express identity and related information. OAuth access tokens, by contrast, authorize access to protected resources (NIST NCCoE concept paper, February 2026). In a multi-user agent system the split looks like this:
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| Artifact | Answers | Who should consume it | Common mistake |
|---|---|---|---|
| ID token (OIDC) | Who signed in, and how | The relying party (your app or agent host) that requested sign-in | Sending it to an API as if it were an access token |
| Access token (OAuth) | What this client may do, for which user, at which resource | The protected resource it was issued for | Requesting broad scopes, or accepting tokens issued for a different audience |
| Agent/workload credential | Which software instance is acting | The authorization server or policy layer | Placing it in prompts or model context |
In the relying party, validate the ID token’s issuer, audience, signature and nonce, along with any other applicable OIDC checks. After that, the ID token has done its job. API authorization runs on access tokens.
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Keep three identities distinct
Many agent deployments collapse everything into one service account or one user token. That makes it impossible to say afterwards whether a person or software made a decision. NIST’s concept paper lists distinguishing human and agent identities, delegation, logging and data provenance among its areas of work. It also states the aim to “Link specific user identities to AI agents or software systems to support effective delegation controls and maintain accountability for the actions of automated systems” (NIST NCCoE, 2026).
- The user is the resource owner whose authority is delegated. Authenticate them through your organization’s OIDC identity provider.
- The agent or workload is the running software. Give it an identity it can prove independently of any user, and keep that credential out of prompts and model context.
- The OAuth client is the application that requests tokens. In the MCP model the MCP client is an OAuth client acting on behalf of a resource owner.
The authorization decision should be able to consider all of them at once: the active user, the agent identity, the requested action, the target resource and the risk. A resource server that sees only “valid token” cannot enforce that.
Scope for this advice: the NIST paper is a concept paper, not a finished profile, and at this stage it focuses on enterprise agents rather than public-facing or individual-user agents. Treat it as direction, not a compliance checklist.
The Tool Desk
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- Sign the user in through OIDC and establish a session tied to that user.
- Authenticate the agent runtime with its own workload credential, separate from the user session.
- Run an authorization-code flow with PKCE for each user and each resource the agent needs, requesting only the scopes the task requires and naming the target resource.
- Store the resulting grants per user. Key tokens by user, agent and resource so one user’s token cannot be selected for another user’s task. This is a design recommendation to prevent cross-user leakage, not a quote from a standard.
- Enforce at the resource server on every call. Validate the signature, expiry, audience and scope before returning anything.
- Cross downstream boundaries with new tokens. If a tool server calls another API, it obtains a token issued for that API (see below).
- Log the decision with the human principal, agent, client, scope, resource and outcome.
OAuth security baseline
RFC 9700, the OAuth Security Best Current Practice published in January 2025, sets the floor (RFC 9700):
- Public clients must use PKCE with authorization-code flows.
- Implicit access-token responses are discouraged, and the resource-owner password credentials grant is prohibited.
- Access tokens should carry minimum privileges and be audience-restricted.
- Sender-constraining access tokens with mutual TLS or DPoP is recommended to reduce misuse of stolen tokens.
- Public-client refresh tokens must be sender-constrained or rotated.
Sender-constraining matters more for agents than for ordinary apps. Agents often handle tokens in logs, tool outputs and long-lived processes, so a leaked bearer token has more places to leak from. Check that your authorization server and resource servers support DPoP or mutual TLS before you plan around either.
What the MCP authorization spec requires
If your agent talks to tools over the Model Context Protocol, the authorization text dated 2026-07-28 applies (MCP Authorization).
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HTTP transports
- Authorization is optional overall, but HTTP implementations that support it should follow the specification.
- The MCP client is an OAuth client acting for a resource owner. The protected MCP server is a resource server.
- Clients discover the server’s authorization setup through Protected Resource Metadata, then through authorization-server metadata or OIDC discovery.
- The client needs a registered identity. Client ID Metadata Documents are a SHOULD, and Dynamic Client Registration is a MAY, kept for backward compatibility.
- Scope selection should follow least privilege.
- When this profile is used, MCP authorization servers are required to implement OAuth 2.1. The spec references OAuth 2.1 as an IETF draft, so confirm the current text and your client libraries’ support before depending on it.
STDIO transports
The spec says STDIO implementations should not follow the HTTP authorization profile and should retrieve credentials from the environment instead. That moves the problem to the host: protect the process, its environment variables and any child processes, and do not let one user’s environment serve another user’s session.
Do not pass tokens through
The MCP security considerations (Authorization Security Considerations) are the most important rules for multi-hop agents:
“MCP servers MUST validate access tokens before processing the request, ensuring the access token is issued specifically for the MCP server, and take all necessary steps to ensure no data is returned to unauthorized parties.” — Model Context Protocol, 2026-07-28 specification
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- Clients must use the
resourceparameter to identify the intended resource. - Redirect URIs must be validated exactly.
- A server must not pass the token it received to an upstream API.
The reason is the confused-deputy problem. If a token for the MCP server also works at an upstream API, the audience restriction means nothing, and the upstream API cannot tell which client it is really dealing with. Instead, the MCP server should obtain a separate token issued for the upstream resource, either through its own authorization-code flow with the user or, where supported, through OAuth token exchange (RFC 8693). The IETF WIMSE interim slides list token exchange among the relevant building blocks, but no source I reviewed establishes a universal, cross-vendor delegation chain, so test the exact combination of authorization servers you plan to use (WIMSE interim presentation, 2026).
Approval, interruption and revocation
Scopes granted up front are rarely enough for an agent that runs for minutes or hours. Decide in advance:
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- What triggers step-up authorization, such as a higher-risk scope, a new resource or an unusual amount.
- How a revoked grant, a changed user session or a change in device or workload risk stops in-flight work.
The IETF interim presentation discusses human-in-the-loop authorization and notes that its CIBA (backchannel authentication) example fits poorly with soliciting approval in the middle of execution. Treat the interaction mechanism as a design question. One that works for a chat assistant may not work for a background job.
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Audit trail
Record at least: the human principal, the agent or workload, the OAuth client, the delegated scope, the target resource, the authorization outcome and the action taken. Where it affects risk decisions, keep provenance of the prompt or data that triggered the action. Agent-generated claims about who they are acting for should be treated as untrusted input, not as identity. NIST names logging, transparency and data-flow provenance as areas of interest.
How mature are the standards?
| Source | Status | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| RFC 9700 (OAuth Security BCP) | Published RFC, January 2025 | Treat as the baseline. |
| MCP authorization spec | Version dated 2026-07-28; references OAuth 2.1 as an IETF draft | Follow for MCP over HTTP; recheck for newer revisions and client support. |
| draft-klrc-aiagent-auth-03 | Internet-Draft published 2026-07-06, informational, expires 2027-01-07 | Aims to describe how existing standards such as WIMSE and OAuth apply to agents, not to define a new protocol. Not a final RFC. |
| WIMSE interim slides | Meeting material, 2026 | Useful map of building blocks (authorization code, client credentials, token exchange, JWT access tokens, introspection, protected-resource metadata, audit); not normative. |
| NIST NCCoE concept paper | February 2026 concept paper | Direction on identity, authorization, delegation, logging and provenance; enterprise focus. |
Comparing implementation options
If you are choosing between, say, a gateway that mints tokens, token exchange, or per-resource user consent, score each option on these questions:
Quick Recap
- Principal preserved: does the resource server learn both which user delegated and which agent acted?
- Scope and audience: can permission be limited to exact actions and one API?
- Token boundary: is a new, correctly audience-bound token issued at every downstream hop?
- Interactivity: can you get consent or step-up approval mid-task?
- Revocation: can grants and sessions be cut when user, device or workload risk changes?
- Audit: can you reconstruct the decision and its inputs without trusting agent-generated claims?
- Interoperability and cost: do your deployed clients and authorization servers support the discovery, registration, token-exchange and sender-constraining features you need?
Pre-launch checklist
- ID tokens are validated at sign-in and never sent to APIs.
- The agent has its own workload identity, and its credentials never enter prompts or model context.
- Authorization-code flow with PKCE and exact redirect matching; no implicit or password grants.
- Scopes are minimal and each token carries a resource/audience, checked at every resource server.
- No token passthrough: each upstream API gets a token issued for it.
- Tokens are stored per user, agent and resource, with no shared service account for user-owned data.
- Sender-constrained tokens (DPoP or mutual TLS) or refresh-token rotation are in place where supported.
- High-risk actions have step-up approval, and revocation is tested against a running task.
- Logs capture user, agent, client, scope, resource, outcome and action.
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