Where the term appears ## Delegating actions without handing over the keys In this channel's material, delegated authority with guardrails captures the pattern that lets an agent act on a person's behalf while that person — and the infrastructure around them — keeps meaningful control. As agents become a new class of internet actor, Stripe's Emily Glassberg Sands argues that every layer of the stack — discovery, payments, identity, fraud — must be rethought to accommodate them. [^90e39a1e-87e8-5b3f-b9f2-f003e83fd62b@96] Payments are the concrete case explored in the source: consumers need a way to decide which agents may request credentials and under what limits. Stripe's Link wallet does exactly this — it lets the consumer grant an agent purchasing power, but bounded. [^90e39a1e-87e8-5b3f-b9f2-f003e83fd62b@3139] ## The guardrails in the payment layer The second mechanism is the shared payment token: credentials pass merchant-ward without the agent ever seeing them. The agent gets enough authority to complete a transaction, but not enough to exfiltrate the card details. [^90e39a1e-87e8-5b3f-b9f2-f003e83fd62b@2760] Both mechanisms are guardrails wrapped around delegated authority: - Scope limits — the consumer chooses which agents can act, not just whether agents can act. - Boundaries — spending happens under limits the consumer controls. - Credential insulation — the agent executes the transaction without ever holding the underlying credential. ## Why it matters These guardrails exist because agent fraud and abuse reshape the threat model: fraudsters now target compute rather than card numbers, and defenses must be integrated across the whole customer lifecycle rather than bolted on at checkout. [^90e39a1e-87e8-5b3f-b9f2-f003e83fd62b@240] [^90e39a1e-87e8-5b3f-b9f2-f003e83fd62b@619] Delegated authority with guardrails is the design answer: let agents transact, but keep the delegation scoped, bounded, and revocable by the human on whose behalf they act. - Agents are a new class of internet actor, forcing identity and payment infrastructure to be rebuilt for delegated action. [^90e39a1e-87e8-5b3f-b9f2-f003e83fd62b@96] — no, keep it as: - Agents are a new class of internet actor, which forces payments and identity layers to support delegated action safely. - Stripe's Link wallet lets consumers decide which agents may request credentials and under what limits. - Shared payment tokens let credentials reach the merchant without the agent ever seeing them. - Fraud defenses now span the full customer lifecycle, which raises the stakes for well-guarded delegation.