Credentials and Secrets

A scoped credential is an access token or secret narrowed to a specific set of actions, resources, or services—granting only the access needed for the intended operation.

An ephemeral credential is a short-lived access token or secret that expires automatically after a defined period or when a task ends, reducing the window of exposure if the credential is compromised.

Scoped ephemeral credentials are short-lived credentials narrowed to a specific task, tool action, resource, and runtime policy boundary—combining the least-privilege properties of scoping with the limited-exposure properties of ephemerality.

Scoped runtime access is the practice of granting an AI agent only the access it needs during execution—dynamically scoped to the current task, tool, and runtime policy context—rather than pre-provisioning broad static access.

Credential narrowing is the process of deriving a new credential from a broader parent credential with a reduced set of permissions—limiting the derived credential to only the access required for a specific task or tool call.

Credential blast radius is the total access that becomes compromised if a credential used by an AI agent is stolen, leaked, or misused—determined by the scope and lifetime of that credential.

A task-scoped token is an access token issued specifically for a single agent task, carrying only the permissions needed for that task and expiring when the task completes or times out.