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For an AI agent acting on a person’s data, use delegated OAuth access whenever a user is present and the downstream service should enforce that user’s permissions. Use an app-only bot identity for genuinely unattended or application-owned work, then constrain it with narrowly scoped permissions, an explicit audit model, and protected credentials. A shared bot token is not automatically unsafe, but it can hide which person initiated an action and can create a larger blast radius if its credentials or permissions are excessive.
The practical choice is about identity context, not whether the client is called an “agent.” Delegated access carries a user context through the request chain. App-only access represents the application itself. Both models still require audience restrictions, least privilege, token validation, credential protection and clear revocation procedures.
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Delegated access and app-only access at a glance
| Decision axis | Delegated access | Shared app or bot identity |
|---|---|---|
| Principal seen by the API | User context plus the client or agent, depending on implementation | Application or service principal |
| Authorization boundary | The user’s permissions can be enforced downstream | Application permissions govern the workload; the app may reach data beyond one user unless separately constrained |
| Best fit | Interactive, user-requested work on user-owned resources | Scheduled or background automation with no active user |
| Attribution | The requesting user can remain part of the authorization and audit chain | The application must record human intent separately when it matters |
| Operational needs | Consent, token lifecycle, user revocation and scope design | Service-identity lifecycle, secret or key protection, narrow app permissions and audit controls |
| Failure impact | Depends on delegated scopes, audience, token lifetime and provider enforcement | Depends on app permissions, credential exposure, audience and overall blast radius |
These are design axes rather than guarantees that every identity provider implements identically. Microsoft’s guidance distinguishes delegated scopes from application roles and recommends delegated access for user-owned data when possible. Microsoft identity-management guidance explains the distinction.
What delegated OAuth access means for an AI agent
In a delegated flow, a person signs in and authorizes an application to act within a defined set of permissions. The access token represents the application acting with that user’s authority. A mail, file, ticketing or customer-data API can therefore evaluate both the requested operation and the signed-in user’s rights.
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Delegation does not make an agent omnipotent. The effective result is bounded by the provider’s consent rules, the scopes in the token, the user’s own permissions and the resource server’s validation. If the user cannot read a file, a correctly enforced delegated request should not let the agent read it merely because the agent is clever or because a language model generated a different API call.
When delegation is the natural fit
- A user asks the agent to summarize, edit, send, file or retrieve something in that user’s account.
- The service must enforce per-user sharing rules, ownership, legal holds or tenant boundaries.
- An organization needs an audit trail that connects an action to the person who requested it.
- Users must be able to withdraw access without disabling the entire agent for everyone.
Delegation also supports a useful security property for multi-user agents: the same software can serve many people while each API call is evaluated against the requesting person’s authority. That is materially different from giving every conversation the same powerful service credential.
What a shared bot token means
“Shared bot token” describes an architecture in which multiple agent workers, conversations or services use one application credential. It is not a single OAuth grant type. The credential might represent an app-only client-credentials flow, a service account, a long-lived secret, or another provider-specific mechanism.
With app-only authorization, there is no signed-in user in the token’s subject context. The resource server sees the application or service principal and applies the application’s permissions. This is appropriate when work is genuinely unattended, such as a scheduled reconciliation job, queue consumer or process operating on data owned by the application itself.
The same model is risky when used simply to bypass a user’s permissions. If a backend identity can read every mailbox or customer record, asking the backend to perform a user-requested action may silently replace a narrow user boundary with the application’s much broader authority. Microsoft advises using the smallest application permission set required and not treating an app identity as a shortcut around user authorization. Its access-pattern guidance covers delegated scopes and app roles.
Why sharing one credential changes the risk
A shared credential concentrates authority and operational dependency. If it is exposed, an attacker may be able to replay it from anywhere the resource server accepts it. The impact is determined by the credential’s scopes, audience, lifetime, refresh behavior and the resources covered—not by the word “bot.” A narrowly scoped, short-lived token for one API is a different risk from a broadly privileged credential accepted by several services.
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Attribution is another issue. The API may record only the application principal even though a human prompted the agent. You can preserve intent by recording the authenticated user, conversation, request identifier, policy decision and resulting operation in an application audit system, but that record is separate from downstream authorization. It should never be used to claim that the API itself enforced the user’s rights when it did not.
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How the authorization context travels through an agent system
A typical delegated request has several actors: the user, the agent-facing client, one or more backend services and the final resource server. The design question is whether the user context survives each hop.
- The user authenticates and grants the client the minimum scopes needed for the requested feature.
- The client obtains an access token whose audience is the intended resource server.
- The agent service validates the request and applies its own policy before calling downstream systems.
- The downstream API validates the token, checks its audience and scopes, and enforces the user’s permissions.
- The service records the user, client, action, resource and result for audit and incident response.
If a backend cannot present the original user context to a downstream API, it should not imply that the API made a user-level decision. Instead, the system should explicitly document the service principal as the actor and enforce compensating controls such as resource allowlists, per-tenant isolation and approval gates.
Choosing between the models
Choose delegated access when a person is asking
Use delegated authorization when the agent is a user-facing assistant and the operation affects that person’s files, messages, tickets, records or other protected resources. Keep the user identity available through the request chain and make the resulting action traceable to the user request. This is the default for interactive work because the API can enforce the same boundary the user would face in its own interface.
Choose app-only access for true background work
Use an app-only identity when no user is signed in or when the data and operation belong to the application itself. Examples include processing a queue, rotating application-owned records, running a scheduled report over an explicitly assigned dataset or performing service-to-service maintenance.
Write down why no user context exists. “The agent is easier to implement this way” is not a sufficient reason. The control owner should be able to state which resources the application owns, which operations it performs, who approves those permissions and how the identity is disabled.
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Use a split design when the workload has both modes
Many products need both interactive and unattended behavior. Give the interactive path delegated permissions and a separate app-only identity to the scheduled worker. Do not let a background worker inherit the interactive client’s broad scopes, and do not let an interactive conversation silently fall back to the worker’s authority when the user lacks access.
Controls required in either model
Restrict privileges and audience
RFC 9700, the IETF’s OAuth 2.0 Security Best Current Practice (BCP 240), published in January 2025, states: “The privileges associated with an access token SHOULD be restricted to the minimum required for the particular application or use case.” RFC 9700 also recommends restricting a token’s audience to one resource server or a small, deliberately chosen set. A resource server should reject a token that was not intended for it.
Design scopes around operations and resources, not vague roles such as “agent access.” Separate read, create, update, delete, send and administrative actions where the provider allows it. Request elevated permission only for the step that needs it, and avoid placing unrelated APIs in one token audience.
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Never rely on the model, prompt, orchestration layer or agent framework to self-limit. The API receiving the call must validate signature or introspection results, issuer, audience, expiry, scopes, client binding and any provider-specific claims. Reject expired, malformed, wrong-audience or insufficiently scoped tokens before performing side effects.
Use refresh tokens only where the client and provider’s rules allow them, store them outside prompts and conversation history, and revoke them when a user disconnects the integration or an account is disabled. RFC 9700 requires public-client refresh tokens to be sender-constrained or rotated, subject to the document’s conditions. The RFC’s refresh-token section describes that protection.
Protect credential material
- Keep client secrets, private keys and refresh tokens in a dedicated secret-management system rather than source code, logs, prompts or vector stores.
- Limit which worker processes can retrieve a credential and record every retrieval.
- Rotate secrets and keys on a defined schedule and immediately after suspected exposure.
- Use separate credentials for development, testing and production.
- Design emergency revocation and disablement procedures before deployment.
Use sender-constrained tokens where supported
Sender constraint binds a token to a key or client channel, reducing the value of a stolen bearer token. Mutual TLS (mTLS) and Demonstrating Proof of Possession (DPoP) are examples discussed in RFC 9700. The protection is incomplete if an attacker obtains both the token and the associated private key, so key storage and process isolation remain essential.
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Make attribution explicit
For delegated actions, record the user subject, client, scopes, resource, consent or policy decision, tool call, approval step and outcome. For app-only actions, record the service principal and the job or workflow that authorized it. If a human initiated an app-only action, preserve that human identity in a tamper-resistant application log and correlate it with the downstream request identifier.
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RFC 8693 defines OAuth token exchange for obtaining a token suitable for another resource or context. A service can exchange one security token for a downstream credential with a different audience, lifetime or set of permissions. This is useful when an agent gateway should not pass its original token to every internal API.
Token exchange does not decide whether the downstream service should trust the user, the calling service or both. RFC 8693 distinguishes delegation from impersonation and leaves detailed trust models and token-security profiles to each deployment. The RFC 8693 specification therefore needs to be paired with a written policy covering the subject, actor, audience, allowed exchanges, lifetime and audit semantics.
Questions to answer before enabling exchange
- Who is the subject of the issued token: the user, the service or another principal?
- Which actor claim identifies the service performing the exchange?
- Which resource server is allowed to accept the new token?
- Can the exchanged token perform fewer operations than the source token?
- How are consent, policy approval, revocation and incident investigation represented?
An IETF WIMSE interim presentation discusses delegated authorization for agents, OAuth 2.0, RFC 9700, RFC 8693, introspection and evolving identity-chaining and transaction-token work. It is meeting material rather than a finalized interoperability standard, so treat emerging mechanisms as deployment-specific until a provider documents support. View the WIMSE interim presentation.
Implementation blueprint for delegated agents
- Define the user action. List exactly what the agent can do, which resources it can touch and which operations require confirmation.
- Map each operation to a narrow delegated scope. Separate read-only tasks from changes and high-impact actions such as sending messages, deleting records or changing permissions.
- Use the provider’s authorization-code flow or equivalent user-consent flow. Request consent for the scopes needed by the selected feature, not every capability the product might add later.
- Bind the token to the intended resource server. Validate issuer, audience, expiry, scopes and user claims before invoking tools.
- Preserve the user context across services. If a gateway calls another API, use a documented on-behalf-of or token-exchange pattern rather than copying a bearer token indiscriminately.
- Place confirmation at the risk boundary. Require an explicit user confirmation immediately before irreversible or externally visible actions, even when the token technically permits them.
- Implement disconnect and revocation. Remove local tokens, stop queued work and honor provider revocation or account disablement signals.
- Audit the complete chain. Correlate user, client, agent run, tool call, downstream token and resource result.
Implementation blueprint for app-only agents
- Document the unattended purpose. Identify the owner of the data, schedule or queue and explain why no user delegation is available.
- Create a dedicated service identity. Do not reuse an interactive client or a credential shared by unrelated workloads.
- Grant the smallest application permission set. Restrict resources by tenant, project, mailbox, folder, dataset or API route where the platform supports it.
- Separate workers by trust boundary. A report generator should not automatically share credentials with a destructive maintenance job.
- Use short-lived access tokens. Keep long-lived secrets or private keys in protected storage and make rotation and emergency disablement routine.
- Enforce resource-server validation. The API must check audience, scopes, issuer and expiry rather than trusting an internal network location.
- Build an attribution log. Record job identity, trigger, tenant, resources, policy decision and operator approval when a person initiated the run.
- Test failure and recovery paths. Verify behavior after secret rotation, token expiry, permission removal, service-account disablement and partial downstream failure.
AI-agent-specific failure modes
The prompt becomes an accidental authorization layer
An instruction such as “only access this customer’s records” is not a substitute for a token scope or resource-server policy. Models can misunderstand, tools can be miswired and prompts can be altered. Enforce the boundary in the authorization system and API, then use the prompt only to explain the permitted behavior.
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Passing one token through search, email, file and administrative tools turns the token audience into a cross-service blast radius. Issue a credential for the specific downstream resource, or exchange it for a narrower token with an explicitly defined trust relationship.
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Human approval is recorded but not enforced
A log entry saying “user approved” does not prove that the API authorized the action for that user. For delegated flows, retain the user context in the token path. For app-only flows, enforce a separate approval policy and make the service identity’s authority explicit.
Queued work outlives the user’s authorization
Agents often enqueue tasks after a conversation ends. Define whether a queued operation uses the original delegated authorization, must be reauthorized, or is prohibited after a timeout. Cancel queued work when access is revoked, and avoid silently substituting a powerful bot credential.
Logs leak credentials or sensitive prompts
Redact access and refresh tokens, authorization codes, private keys and unneeded personal data from traces. Keep enough identifiers to investigate the action without copying the complete token or conversation into every service log.
Testing and review checklist
- Can a user access only resources that the downstream API says that user may access?
- Does an app-only worker fail when its resource allowlist excludes the requested object?
- Does every resource server reject a token with the wrong audience?
- What happens when a token expires during a multi-step agent run?
- Can an administrator revoke one user’s delegated access without taking down other users?
- Can the security team disable one bot identity without disabling unrelated automation?
- Are destructive operations separated from read-only operations and protected by confirmation or approval?
- Can investigators connect a downstream action to a user request, service job, token subject and actor?
- After rotation, are old secrets and keys rejected everywhere?
- If both token and sender-constraining key are stolen, what additional controls limit misuse?
Standards and deployment boundaries
RFC 9700 was published in January 2025 as the OAuth 2.0 Security Best Current Practice. It supplies general recommendations such as minimum privileges, audience restriction, sender constraint and refresh-token protections; it does not make every provider implement those features identically.
RFC 8693, published in January 2020, specifies a basic token-exchange protocol. It intentionally leaves trust models and detailed security characteristics of issued tokens to deployment profiles. Provider documentation therefore determines supported claims, consent behavior, revocation semantics, introspection and audit fields.
Before committing to an emerging agent-identity mechanism, verify its current draft status, provider support, resource-server behavior and incident-response procedures. A protocol name alone does not establish that two vendors’ implementations interoperate or that a token carries the user context your policy requires.
Bottom line for architects
Make delegated access the default for an agent acting on a person’s behalf. It gives downstream services a user context they can authorize and audit. Reserve app-only bot identities for work that is genuinely unattended or application-owned, and isolate them with minimal permissions, narrow audiences, protected keys, explicit attribution and revocation controls. Token exchange can reduce downstream privilege, while mTLS or DPoP can reduce replay of stolen tokens, but neither replaces a clear decision about who is authorized to act.
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