Agents[REDACTED:location_address] Access[REDACTED:location_address] and the Future of Machine Identity

Talk transcript

1. 0:00

   [upbeat music] Hi[REDACTED:location_address] I'm Lizzie.

2. 0:16

   I'm a developer advocate at Cloudflare.

3. 0:19

   And I'm Nick. I'm a developer experience engineer at WorkOS.

4. 0:23

   Yes. So at Cloudflare[REDACTED:location_address] I make a lot of AI demos[REDACTED:location_address] AI MCP servers. Anyone here also making any of those?

5. 0:32

   Yes.

6. 0:32

   Agents? Nice. Of course[REDACTED:location_address] should've guessed[REDACTED:location_address] 'cause conference. So I've been having fun making agents and MCP servers that act on behalf of me. I built an agent to auto vote in the NBA finals for me[REDACTED:location_address] and then I got blocked eventually. [laughs] [laughs]

7. 0:49

   Uh[REDACTED:location_address] anyways[REDACTED:location_address] I like book tennis courts in San Francisco[REDACTED:location_address] 'cause Lord knows that is hard enough to do already. So I think that's like a great agent use case.

8. 0:57

   Agent that acts for me[REDACTED:location_address] automates some of the tedious parts of my life[REDACTED:location_address] things that I want to do. However[REDACTED:location_address] that does beg the question[REDACTED:location_address]

9. 1:07

   how do you control what they're allowed to do?

10. 1:10

    Yeah. And we're[REDACTED:location_address] we're moving so fast with all of this and having fun getting it to do things. You know[REDACTED:location_address] GitHub MCP is like one of my favorites because I can just like get it going and[REDACTED:location_address] and[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] have it like read reviews for me[REDACTED:location_address] read diffs for me[REDACTED:location_address] and[REDACTED:location_address] and[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] just help me manage GitHub[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address]

11. 1:25

    which is really awesome. But it's very like developer centric. Obviously[REDACTED:location_address] it's GitHub[REDACTED:location_address] but MCPs in general[REDACTED:location_address] like you have to go and edit this like JSON file and do that[REDACTED:location_address] and it's really tough to[REDACTED:location_address] to like...

12. 1:35

    I have to give it a PAT[REDACTED:location_address] and[REDACTED:location_address] you know[REDACTED:location_address] that's[REDACTED:location_address] that's an advanced use case for non-developers. Uh[REDACTED:location_address] and so we really need a way to let these tools act on our behalf[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] but in a more traditional way that's easy for[REDACTED:location_address] for end users to be able to set that up.

13. 1:52

    And[REDACTED:location_address] um[REDACTED:location_address] so yeah[REDACTED:location_address] that-that's what we do at WorkOS. Uh[REDACTED:location_address] we[REDACTED:location_address] we do like authorization and user management[REDACTED:location_address] and like the[REDACTED:location_address] the main point of this talk is to really help[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] drive the idea that we need like the same kind of credentials and[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] authorization that we do with user-facing projects.

14. 2:09

    We need the agents to do that as well as a start[REDACTED:location_address] and then we have a lot of places that we can go with this as we get more fine-grained.

15. 2:16

    Um[REDACTED:location_address] but really the[REDACTED:location_address] the point is that OAuth really just isn't for humans anymore. It's for our agents acting on our behalf.

16. 2:26

    And you know what else agents need? Memory[REDACTED:location_address] persistent storage.

17. 2:31

    Anyone here use Cloudflare? You think you know what Cloudflare does?

18. 2:37

    No.

19. 2:37

    I'm here to tell you that you do not. [laughs] [laughs]

20. 2:40

    Uh[REDACTED:location_address] [laughs] people are like[REDACTED:location_address] "Oh[REDACTED:location_address] you do security[REDACTED:location_address] CDN[REDACTED:location_address] DDoS protection[REDACTED:location_address] bot management." We do so much more. We have compute[REDACTED:location_address] Cloudflare Workers. We can host your code on the edge.

21. 2:51

    Uh[REDACTED:location_address] we host AI models you can run inference on. Uh[REDACTED:location_address] Vectorize[REDACTED:location_address] we have a vector database[REDACTED:location_address] a SQL database[REDACTED:location_address] Durable Objects[REDACTED:location_address] which is what we use in our agents framework to maintain memory[REDACTED:location_address] very important.

22. 3:05

    And video streaming[REDACTED:location_address] image optimization[REDACTED:location_address] so much more. If you use Cloudflare Workers[REDACTED:location_address] we have bindings[REDACTED:location_address] bindings that you interact from your web app[REDACTED:location_address] from your website[REDACTED:location_address] from your agent as well[REDACTED:location_address] because our agents and MCP servers are kind of similar i-in that you can use bindings to interact with other Cloudflare products.

23. 3:26

    And also just like[REDACTED:location_address] [smacks lips] of course[REDACTED:location_address] you can use other companies' products as well. And of course[REDACTED:location_address] now we have a free tier. Durable Objects used to not be free. [smacks lips]

24. 3:35

    Now you can use it. And I know startups who use Cloudflare who do not pay us[REDACTED:location_address] and they make money. [laughs] But I digress.

25. 3:42

    But yeah[REDACTED:location_address] all of these pieces[REDACTED:location_address] they really help to[REDACTED:location_address] um[REDACTED:location_address] like they just fit naturally-

26. 3:47

    Yeah

27. 3:47

    ... into building these agents 'cause they'll deliver the code to where you're at[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] and you can use the Durable Objects to store persistence on them. Uh[REDACTED:location_address] and you can also use things[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] like[REDACTED:location_address] like authorization to[REDACTED:location_address] um[REDACTED:location_address] make sure...

28. 3:59

    And there's a whole OAuth framework with-

29. 4:01

    Mm-hmm

30. 4:01

    ... uh[REDACTED:location_address] Cloudflare's[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] agents framework that lets you set up that authorization so that you can easily[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] know who the worker is or the[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] agent is acting on behalf of.

31. 4:12

    Mm-hmm.

32. 4:16

    So-

33. 4:17

    And this agenda will be made available at the end-

34. 4:20

    Yeah

35. 4:20

    ... in the GitHub repo. It's a Markdown file.

36. 4:24

    So we[REDACTED:location_address] we did build[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] an MCP server[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] using Cloudflare and using WorkOS and[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] it's[REDACTED:location_address] it's just a very basic one. You'll be able to check it out[REDACTED:location_address] and you can use it and run it today[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] which is really awesome.

37. 4:35

    Um[REDACTED:location_address] and we're[REDACTED:location_address] we're just gonna deploy it real quick. So I'll just do[REDACTED:location_address] um[REDACTED:location_address] npm run[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] deploy[REDACTED:location_address] which will run Wrangler to deploy that. And as soon as it's out there[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] we'll be able to see it in my[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] in my compute here.

38. 4:52

    Oops[REDACTED:location_address] it was just there.

39. 4:53

    That's the Cloudflare dashboard[REDACTED:location_address] and it's also very easy to run locally as well

40. 4:58

    with like npm run or Wrangler run[REDACTED:location_address] something similar.

41. 5:02

    So a few seconds ago[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] we've got it deployed. And going back to the terminal[REDACTED:location_address] it gave me a URL here. And so I can just copy my workers URL[REDACTED:location_address] and I'm gonna go over to my client[REDACTED:location_address] Claude[REDACTED:location_address] and I'm just gonna hit this button and say Add Integration.

42. 5:19

    And it's gonna pop up. I'll make this big. Uh[REDACTED:location_address] and I can go Add Integration[REDACTED:location_address] and I'll just say I wanna add mcp.shop.

43. 5:26

    Oh-ho-ho[REDACTED:location_address] what could it be? [laughs] Naming things is hard.

44. 5:30

    I'm just tacking on slash MCP onto there[REDACTED:location_address] and now I've got mcp-shop[REDACTED:location_address] and I'm gonna connect. And so once I connect[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] this is pulling up and allowing me to tell the agent[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] who to act on behalf of[REDACTED:location_address] me in this case.

45. 5:45

    Uh[REDACTED:location_address] so I'm gonna sign in with GitHub. It's going to

46. 5:50

    do its thing[REDACTED:location_address] and then Cloudfl-- Or[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] sorry[REDACTED:location_address] Claude is refreshed[REDACTED:location_address] and now it can act on behalf of me.

47. 5:56

    And can we see the tools?

48. 5:58

    Yeah.

49. 5:59

    Yeah. So what should we ask?

50. 6:07

    I guess let's order a shirt.

51. 6:08

    Let's order a shirt. [laughs] I love shirts.

52. 6:13

    Yo[REDACTED:location_address] I hear I can get a shirt. Get a shirt from you.

53. 6:22

    Live demos in an LLM. [laughs]

54. 6:25

    Wi-Fi[REDACTED:location_address] don't fail us. [laughs]

55. 6:29

    So it's running[REDACTED:location_address] and it recognized that it has tools available now from mcp.shop[REDACTED:location_address] so it's going to list the inventory. We'll go ahead and let it run.

56. 6:42

    Yeah[REDACTED:location_address] there's an MCP shirt. You can get it for free. Uh[REDACTED:location_address] and you can pick your size[REDACTED:location_address] and then all it needs is just your company name and your mailing address.

57. 6:51

    And so I'll say gimme. Uh[REDACTED:location_address] I'll say XL and [REDACTED:location_address][REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] Bellevue[REDACTED:location_address] Nebraska. There's a Bellevue[REDACTED:location_address] Nebraska.

58. 7:04

    Huh.

59. 7:04

    Uh[REDACTED:location_address] and we'll do that. Oh[REDACTED:location_address] it needs my company name.

60. 7:15

    That's so LinkedIn.

61. 7:17

    WorkOS duh. Might be my company name is WorkOS duh now. [laughs] [laughs]

62. 7:26

    So let that run. Oh[REDACTED:location_address] it's sure thinking about it. It's confirmed it.

63. 7:41

    Done[REDACTED:location_address] and there's my order number. It's gonna be sent to that address[REDACTED:location_address] and I'm gonna say[REDACTED:location_address] ooh[REDACTED:location_address]

64. 7:47

    what[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] is the order info? So I can see what... Uh[REDACTED:location_address] is[REDACTED:location_address] is my name or my company name WorkOS duh?

65. 7:57

    Kind of hope it is.

66. 7:58

    Human in the loop. [laughs] Need to confirm.

67. 8:02

    No[REDACTED:location_address] it got it.

68. 8:03

    Ah.

69. 8:03

    All right. That was totally me[REDACTED:location_address] not Claude. [laughs]

70. 8:09

    Uh[REDACTED:location_address] so yeah. I was able to order a shirt[REDACTED:location_address] and you can as well[REDACTED:location_address] but that's just a piece of it. So when we ran this[REDACTED:location_address] um[REDACTED:location_address] it's going into...

71. 8:19

    Close that. Uh[REDACTED:location_address] if we go into my Cloudflare platform here and go to storage KV[REDACTED:location_address] I've got an orders here.

72. 8:28

    This is key value storage.

73. 8:29

    Yep. And there is the data from the order. So now I've got that saved off. I can use that[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] and it was all through that interface. So we really just[REDACTED:location_address] like[REDACTED:location_address] gave Claude the tools that it needed[REDACTED:location_address] and it was able to act on my behalf.

74. 8:46

    And I can go back in and I can say[REDACTED:location_address] like[REDACTED:location_address] "Can you tell me what you

75. 8:53

    know about me?" And this... [laughs] So[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] we've got a get user info[REDACTED:location_address] and this is really just gonna give me[REDACTED:location_address] like[REDACTED:location_address] mostly the[REDACTED:location_address] the JWT information. What's on my[REDACTED:location_address] my JWT[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] that Claude now knows about me.

76. 9:11

    So it knows my name[REDACTED:location_address] it knows my email address. In my JWT[REDACTED:location_address] I have my favorite song in there[REDACTED:location_address] um-

77. 9:16

    Careless Whisper

78. 9:18

    ... uh[REDACTED:location_address] now I will give you a rendition. Uh [laughs] and so[REDACTED:location_address] um[REDACTED:location_address] from there it also knows that I have admin permissions. Uh[REDACTED:location_address] so I've shod admin access because that's in my roles and permissions.

79. 9:32

    The[REDACTED:location_address] the other cool thing that you can do[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] with[REDACTED:location_address] like[REDACTED:location_address] the Cloudflare piece of it[REDACTED:location_address] and because[REDACTED:location_address] like[REDACTED:location_address] your[REDACTED:location_address] your MCP server is a[REDACTED:location_address] um[REDACTED:location_address] durable object[REDACTED:location_address] you can also store data[REDACTED:location_address] like[REDACTED:location_address] directly on that that's[REDACTED:location_address] that's located on that.

80. 9:46

    You wanna explain that?

81. 9:48

    Durable Objects[REDACTED:location_address] tough name. If you search Twitter[REDACTED:location_address] people tweet about how they're like[REDACTED:location_address] "This is a bad name. Change the name." [laughs] But very fast storage. You can spin them up per user.

82. 9:59

    Uh[REDACTED:location_address] they're close to the user as well for[REDACTED:location_address] like[REDACTED:location_address] faster retrieval and storage.

83. 10:07

    And so what I did is I just asked it to change the demo mode to band[REDACTED:location_address] and that ran a tool[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] in the MCP server itself

84. 10:16

    that is[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] just going in[REDACTED:location_address] and on the[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] context that's associated with this worker object[REDACTED:location_address] it's just changing the mode to band. And so now I've got that[REDACTED:location_address] and now I can say[REDACTED:location_address] um[REDACTED:location_address] "I want another shirt[REDACTED:location_address] please."

85. 10:33

    And it's gonna try and run it. I'll just always allow that now. [laughs]

86. 10:41

    And it was able to check that[REDACTED:location_address] and it said[REDACTED:location_address] "Absolutely not. Go away." [laughs]

87. 10:46

    Wave.

88. 10:48

    Um[REDACTED:location_address] and so[REDACTED:location_address] like[REDACTED:location_address] we can mix what it knows about me with what it has stored about me on the durable object[REDACTED:location_address] and that's in- unique for every user of it.

89. 10:58

    And then[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] I can do things like[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] change it again. So if I say pretty please[REDACTED:location_address] it might have a pretty please tool[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] available. [laughs]

90. 11:24

    Sure is thinking. Yay. Since I asked nicely[REDACTED:location_address] it's gonna let me. [laughs] And I just ordered another shirt.

91. 11:31

    Prompt engineering. [laughs] If you want to build your own MCP servers on Cloudflare[REDACTED:location_address] you can click to deploy your own with no authorization[REDACTED:location_address] so it's authless. So probably don't do that[REDACTED:location_address] but it is very qui- quick to do so.

92. 11:48

    You click click to deploy. It generates a GitHub repo for you. You Git clone that[REDACTED:location_address] and then you edit your own tools[REDACTED:location_address] and they give you some tools to begin with[REDACTED:location_address] so it's[REDACTED:location_address] like[REDACTED:location_address] very fast.

93. 12:00

    But again[REDACTED:location_address] that is authless. Do do auth. And it's still quick to deploy as well with Auth[REDACTED:location_address] just like slightly less fast.

94. 12:09

    Yeah. And the[REDACTED:location_address] the beauty of this is that we're bringing the[REDACTED:location_address] like[REDACTED:location_address] you know[REDACTED:location_address] pretty simple tools. Like[REDACTED:location_address] this is just an OAuth flow being added to an MCP[REDACTED:location_address] and MCP is effectively just an API.

95. 12:20

    Uh[REDACTED:location_address] so we're just[REDACTED:location_address] like[REDACTED:location_address] you know[REDACTED:location_address] getting it caught up with the tools that we already have[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] for humans[REDACTED:location_address] but it's important to get this[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] ready to go for these tools to act on our behalf as well.

96. 12:31

    And where we can see this going in the future is[REDACTED:location_address] like[REDACTED:location_address] much more fine-grained authorization[REDACTED:location_address] where it's maybe[REDACTED:location_address] like[REDACTED:location_address] authorizing[REDACTED:location_address] you know[REDACTED:location_address] per line changes or[REDACTED:location_address] or per tool changes or even[REDACTED:location_address] like[REDACTED:location_address] maybe[REDACTED:location_address] like[REDACTED:location_address] authorizing[REDACTED:location_address] like[REDACTED:location_address] the networks[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] the connections between things[REDACTED:location_address] and just doing...

97. 12:46

    A- as we see it growing to doing thousands of i- of tasks on our behalf[REDACTED:location_address] this Auth piece is gonna be very important[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] and especially the audit trail as well[REDACTED:location_address] and we can get that with[REDACTED:location_address] with Auth tools too[REDACTED:location_address] just to make sure that[REDACTED:location_address] like[REDACTED:location_address] we can see why this interacted this way[REDACTED:location_address] on whose behalf was

98. 13:04

    it on[REDACTED:location_address] and what was the end result? Where did it fail? Uh[REDACTED:location_address] where did it go wrong? Things like that.

99. 13:09

    Think of your users not as users but as deputies. They have access to tools[REDACTED:location_address] and they can use and also misuse them as well. Sometimes I think I trust people.

100. 13:19

     Like[REDACTED:location_address] I do a live demo[REDACTED:location_address] and I'm like[REDACTED:location_address] "Let's see user[REDACTED:location_address] um[REDACTED:location_address] input." [laughs] People sometimes do not nice inputs. Yeah.

101. 13:28

     Yeah. So get out there and deputize your own tools. Um[REDACTED:location_address] we'll- we have this repo available. There is the code[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] a QR code for this repo. Also[REDACTED:location_address] the top QR code is to get-

102. 13:40

     Get your own shirt.

103. 13:41

     A shirt.

104. 13:41

     Sorry.

105. 13:41

     Yeah. Uh[REDACTED:location_address] so or you can just go to mcp.shop[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] which you will run the same workflow that I just ran. Uh[REDACTED:location_address] it doesn't have the Pretty Please tool in it[REDACTED:location_address] though[REDACTED:location_address] uh[REDACTED:location_address] unfortunately.

106. 13:50

     It'll just[REDACTED:location_address] it'll just do it even if you're mean to it. Uh[REDACTED:location_address] but you can order a shirt for the low[REDACTED:location_address] low price of zero dollars. So go check it out and get an MCPT shirt.

107. 14:00

     And if you wanna add your own Pretty Please tool[REDACTED:location_address] check out the code in the second QR code[REDACTED:location_address] and we can't wait to see what MCP servers you build with Auth.

108. 14:08

     Thank you.

109. 14:09

     Thank you. [audience applauds] [outro music]