Intel / article

Solving The Agent Identity Crisis

Source: uber.com
Author: Uber Engineering 2
Date: Published May 21, 2026

Context

Uber's agent-identity system preserves who initiated work as one delegates to another. Without that history, a downstream service may see only a generic software identity, leaving investigators unable to connect an action to the person and agents behind it.

Uber describes issuing a new, short-lived credential for each handoff, restricted to its intended recipient and carrying the verified delegation history. A central gateway checks the credential and applies tool-access policies. The design lets authorization and audit records consider the originating person together with the acting agent, instead of losing that between services.

Terms in this piece · Glossary

AI agent — An AI system that doesn't just answer once but works toward a goal in a loop — taking actions, reading the results, and deciding what to do next.
context window — The maximum amount of text a model can consider at once — its working memory for the current conversation or task.
MCP — The Model Context Protocol — an open standard that lets any AI assistant plug into any tool or data source without custom integration code.

Read the source www.uber.com