Many AI agents still run on a static API key: long-lived, and hard to rotate.

It's a bearer secret, not bound to anything. Whoever copies it can act as your agent.

The fix is a passport that expires within the hour.

SPIFFE, SPIRE, SVIDs, OPA, Rego. Alphabet soup. One airport analogy makes it click, plus why a perfect ID won't stop your agent wiping a database.

Two questions: who are you, and may you board?

An airport asks two questions: who are you, and may you board?

SPIFFE and SPIRE issue the passport that answers the first. OPA runs the gate.

SPIFFE is the standard. SPIRE implements it; meshes like Istio issue SPIFFE IDs too.

The SPIFFE ID: the name in the passport

Your agent's name is a SPIFFE ID:

spiffe://example.org/agents/billing └─────────┘└─────────────┘ trust domain path

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First, the trust domain : the trust root, like the country that issues a passport. Then the path , naming this workload.

The SVID: the passport

So what makes a name proof?…