Michael Grinich

At MIT, Grinich explored architecture and physics before earning a computer-science degree. He interned at E la Carte and worked at Dropbox before returning to school. An email-related capstone helped become Nylas, which he cofounded. The difficulty of getting a polished email client adopted without enterprise controls informed WorkOS: reusable identity and administration APIs for other developers. WorkOS began building in 2019 and launched publicly in 2020.[3][2]

Make service registration discoverable to an agent

In his auth.md talk, Grinich follows an agent that needs to turn a local application into a deployed service. A discoverable Markdown document explains registration, accepted identity proofs, initial permissions and how a human can later claim the account. In the demonstration, the agent presents an identity assertion and receives credentials for deployment. The service decides what access to grant, and the conversation still includes human approvals.[4]

Separate identity registration from token issuance

The WorkOS reference implementation supports a provider-issued identity assertion and a claim flow when such an assertion is unavailable. A service first accepts an identity proof and returns its own signed assertion; a separate token exchange produces access credentials. The anonymous flow begins with limited pre-claim access and later transfers custody through a human claim ceremony. The repository supplies example service and identity-provider implementations so developers can inspect both sides.[5]