Service providers are suspicious of today’s AI agents because there is no practical way to verify that an agent is executing in line with the intent of a human who can be held responsible for the agent’s actions. This fundamental trust barrier is a problem of delegated authority. Current approaches using API keys or session tokens provide insufficient granularity, auditability, and security for real-world autonomous actions. As a result, manual human approval is required to complete transactions, and agents do not live up to their potential.

In this talk, Agne Caunt shows how to provide AI agents with secure, verifiable digital credentials that prove a user’s identity and permissions, allowing vendors to easily trust and approve transactions. She does this through a practical implementation of cryptographic delegation using verifiable credentials. The talk introduces a dual credential architecture combining user identity credentials (KYC) with agent authorization credentials (KYA) that prove bounded, time-limited delegation authority. The system integrates with the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and leverages zero-knowledge proofs for privacy-preserving verification.

Agne makes the conversation tangible with a demonstration illustrating how service providers verify the necessary KYC and KYA credentials. She then covers critical implementation decisions such as wallet UX to reduce adoption friction, RESTful API patterns for AI platform integration, credential lifecycle management, granular permission controls, and ecosystem challenges around standardization and service provider adoption. Attendees will leave with actionable insights for implementing delegated authority in their own AI agent systems.