Zero Agent Gate: Agent-to-Service Auth That Keeps Secrets Out of the LLM (shivekkhurana.com)

Zero Agent Gate (ZAG) has been introduced as a revolutionary stateless authentication system tailored for always-on agents, designed to prevent sensitive credentials such as bearer tokens from being exposed to large language models (LLMs). Unlike traditional methods that rely on prompt security—which can be compromised by prompt injection attacks—ZAG separates the process of signing requests from the agent's reasoning. By using a Command Line Interface (CLI) tool to manage private keys outside of the LLM's context, requests are signed cryptographically, and the agent operates without ever seeing sensitive information. This approach has significant implications for the AI/ML community, particularly in enhancing security when integrating LLMs with third-party services. With ZAG, each service registered generates its own key pair, and authentication is only valid for requests to explicitly registered domains, providing both replay protection and domain restriction inherently. This stateless mechanism allows for independent request verification, eliminating the complexities of token management and session states, ultimately creating a safer environment for deploying AI-driven agents while preventing unauthorized access.