Control Plane by Karl McGuinness

Mission Architecture on AAuth

public@karlmcguinness.com (Karl McGuinness) — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 09:00:00 -0700

Mission-Bound OAuth argues for a durable Mission object that governs delegated authority across approval, lifecycle, delegation, and termination. This follow-up asks whether Dick Hardt’s AAuth draft is a better protocol substrate for the same model, and where AAuth still appears to need an explicit Mission-like authority object.

Mission-Bound OAuth

public@karlmcguinness.com (Karl McGuinness) — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 09:00:00 -0700

OAuth answers whether a request is permitted right now. Mission-Bound OAuth asks whether a delegated mission should still be running at all. This RFC proposes a durable Mission object at the Authorization Server that governs token derivation, lifecycle, delegation, and termination across agent execution.

Client Context and ID-JAG: Encoding Mission at the Authentication Layer

public@karlmcguinness.com (Karl McGuinness) — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 09:00:00 -0700

Rich Authorization Requests are the natural first instinct for encoding agent missions, but access tokens are audience-bound and cross-domain authorization server interoperability is limited. The OpenID Connect Client Context draft takes a different approach: encoding mission intent at authentication time so the ID Token becomes the portable trust anchor for cross-domain access via the Identity Assertion Authorization Grant pattern. Three enforcement layers result: the OpenID Provider enforces mission policy at authentication, the agent runtime enforces it before any external call, and downstream authorization servers enforce it at access time.

Standardize `act` Across Assertion Grants and JWT Access Tokens

public@karlmcguinness.com (Karl McGuinness) — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 09:30:00 -0700

The current split between token exchange semantics and JWT access token practice creates avoidable interoperability failures. A common profile for act, grounded in entity profiles, can align JWT assertion grant and JWT access token processing.

Agents Don't Need Your Passport. They Need Your Authority.

public@karlmcguinness.com (Karl McGuinness) — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 22:59:09 -0800

Enterprise IAM was designed for human-paced execution. Agents remove the presence, pacing, and natural scope-limiting that made those controls work. The result is a structural gap that stronger credentials, tighter scopes, and faster JIT provisioning cannot close.

From Passports to Power of Attorney

public@karlmcguinness.com (Karl McGuinness) — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 22:59:09 -0800

Tokens, credentials, and scopes tell a system what an agent may do. They say nothing about why execution was authorized or when it should end. The Execution Mandate is the primitive that closes that gap: a signed, inspectable authority record that runtime systems can evaluate and revoke throughout the execution lifecycle.

Governing the Stay, Not Just the Entry

public@karlmcguinness.com (Karl McGuinness) — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 22:59:09 -0800

An Execution Mandate defines what delegated authority looks like. This post builds the control plane that makes it operational: how mandates are issued and held as authoritative artifacts, how authority is evaluated continuously rather than at gates, how governance crosses organizational boundaries, and where enforcement lands in practice.

About

public@karlmcguinness.com (Karl McGuinness) — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’m Karl McGuinness, a product and technology leader with 25+ years of experience building mission-critical, internet-scale identity and infrastructure platforms. At Okta, I spent over a decade helping modern enterprises and the broader industry treat identity as foundational infrastructure.

I specialize in product architecture, the intersection of product strategy and system design. I translate ambiguous requirements into durable product structures: domain boundaries, APIs, platform extensibility, and investment sequencing that keep teams fast today and options open later.

Welcome to Control Plane

public@karlmcguinness.com (Karl McGuinness) — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 23:22:40 -0700

Identity is getting weird again, and in a good way.

This blog is where I post hot takes, field notes, and analysis on identity, security, and agentic systems. Some posts will be tactical. Some will be opinionated. Some will be me zooming out and asking, “are we solving the right problem at all?”

Lately I keep coming back to one thing: most of our stack is great at deciding who can get in, and still pretty weak at governing what autonomous systems should keep doing over time.