Better Agent Auth — Bereket Habtemeskel & Paola Estefania, Better Auth
AI agents should have their own credentials, not impersonate users via shared tokens
“We are doing like the CEO credentials, right? You never say like, okay, this is the credentials of CEO, go and read the email.”
Better Auth workshop challenged the common practice of AI agents accessing Gmail, calendars, and personal accounts by impersonating users with their own credentials or tokens. The core argument is that agents should have their own distinct identity and scoped access—analogous to giving a new employee their own company credentials rather than the CEO's. As agent adoption grows, the gap between convenience and security hygiene is becoming a real engineering and governance problem.