--- title: Squares and Rectangles: Why AI Agents Can’t Be Treated... description: AI agents are often treated as standard workloads and assigned service account credentials, but this approach has critical gaps. Unlike deterministic... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/squares-and-rectangles-why-ai-agents-can-t-be-treated-like-regular-workloads-i5cqebdjh twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Squares and Rectangles: Why AI Agents Can’t Be Treated Like Regular Workloads | daily.dev og:description: AI agents are often treated as standard workloads and assigned service account credentials, but this approach has critical gaps. Unlike deterministic... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/squares-and-rectangles-why-ai-agents-can-t-be-treated-like-regular-workloads-i5cqebdjh og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/I5CqeBDJH.png og:image:alt: Squares and Rectangles: Why AI Agents Can’t Be Treated Like Regular Workloads og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Squares and Rectangles: Why AI Agents Can’t Be Treated Like Regular Workloads **[Security Boulevard](https://daily.dev/sources/securityboulevard)** · 6 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary AI agents are often treated as standard workloads and assigned service account credentials, but this approach has critical gaps. Unlike deterministic microservices, AI agents have unpredictable, runtime-determined access patterns, making it hard to scope credentials in advance. Static credentials also create standing access risks since agent behavior can change silently with model or prompt updates. Attribution is another problem — standard logs often can't identify which agent or user session triggered a given action. The proposed solution is a 'blended identity' model: runtime-issued, task-scoped credentials that incorporate both the agent's identity and the delegating user's context, expiring when the task ends, with full audit logging. This approach enables secure agent deployment without slowing rollout. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Human vs. AI Identity: Why AI Agents Are Breaking Identity](https://daily.dev/posts/human-vs-ai-identity-why-ai-agents-are-breaking-identity-rnzw8xk2f) · Security Boulevard · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [The AI agent identity problem nobody’s talking about](https://daily.dev/posts/the-ai-agent-identity-problem-nobody-s-talking-about-gept3zfsr) · The New Stack · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [AI Agents Are Privileged Users; Who Is Auditing Their Access?](https://daily.dev/posts/ai-agents-are-privileged-users-who-is-auditing-their-access--gprca2dhv) · Dark Reading · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [AI Agents Are Not Users: Building an AI Agent Identity Model](https://daily.dev/posts/ai-agents-are-not-users-building-an-ai-agent-identity-model-0gmsbkuop) · Auth0 · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Your Kubernetes RBAC Was Not Built for AI Agents. Here’s Exactly Where It Breaks](https://daily.dev/posts/your-kubernetes-rbac-was-not-built-for-ai-agents-here-s-exactly-where-it-breaks-djvoyoewy) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#security](https://daily.dev/tags/security), [#cloud](https://daily.dev/tags/cloud), [#ai-agents](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-agents) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/squares-and-rectangles-why-ai-agents-can-t-be-treated-like-regular-workloads-i5cqebdjh) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Squares and Rectangles: Why AI Agents Can’t Be Treated Like Regular Workloads","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/squares-and-rectangles-why-ai-agents-can-t-be-treated-like-regular-workloads-i5cqebdjh","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/squares-and-rectangles-why-ai-agents-can-t-be-treated-like-regular-workloads-i5cqebdjh"},"datePublished":"2026-07-16T21:36:47.466Z","dateModified":"2026-07-17T02:20:53.896Z","description":"AI agents are often treated as standard workloads and assigned service account credentials, but this approach has critical gaps. 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