Signing in is not authorization: app access is not agent access
· 6 min read
Most “AI app” demos collapse three different questions into one login button:
- Can this person open the shell?
- Which agents are they allowed to talk to?
- Which knowledge are they allowed to see, download, or ground answers on?
In a real enterprise agent webapp, those are three different control planes. Treat them as one and you get either a security hole or a support nightmare.
Figure 1. SPA calling a web API. Authentication gets you a token; authorization still has to happen on the API. Source: Microsoft Learn: authentication flows and app scenarios.