AI / Agentic AI Interview Questions
How does an OAuth-based identity flow protect an MCP-connected agent session?
Rather than letting an agent act with blanket, unverified trust, an OAuth-based flow establishes identity for the specific session, producing a token that represents a particular user acting through a particular agent, with defined scopes.
- Every action the agent takes carries an identifier tying it back to the real user and the specific rights that were delegated
- Limits what the agent's token can actually do, rather than granting it the full permissions of whichever account it's connected through
- Moves permission logic to an external policy decision point instead of hardcoding it inside the MCP server itself
This addresses a core agentic security concern, without this kind of scoped identity, there's no way to distinguish the agent acting on behalf of a specific authorized user from the agent acting with unrestricted access, which is a much riskier default.
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