Which agent made that request, and on whose authority? A key cannot say. It was issued once, shared widely, and it outlives everyone who remembers why it exists.
An agent, pipeline or service asks to act
It is issued a short-lived, scoped credential
The action runs inside that scope
Every action is attributable
Your pipeline requests authority for the deploy it is actually running. Nothing standing, no secrets in the runner, and blast radius bounded by scope rather than by hope.
Replaces/Long-lived deploy keys sitting in the runner.
An autonomous agent asks before it acts. Policy answers, credentials expire, and every action ties to the human who permitted it.
Replaces/Opaque API keys with no attribution.
Every service and workload carries an identity you can verify and trace, instead of a shared credential you can only rotate.
Replaces/Shared secrets nobody can attribute.
Embed issuance, verification and eligibility into what you sell, through the SDK.
Replaces/
You buy the outcome. The products that deliver it stay underneath, and every one of them is answering the same question.