A Token Broker Pattern for Agent-to-Tool Access
A small architecture pattern to avoid over-privileged long-lived credentials in agent workflows.
In many agent systems, the biggest risk is not model quality. It is credential scope.
A token broker helps by issuing short-lived, task-scoped credentials per tool invocation.
Core idea
- Agent requests capability with task context.
- Policy layer evaluates scope and audience.
- Broker returns short-lived token with audit metadata.
This model is easier to reason about than embedding static keys in long-running agent workers.