Auth for Agents: Let AI Sign Up for Your Product with auth.md — Michael Grinich, WorkOS

Agents are starting to pick your vendors, and most signup flows block them at the door. NEXT UP: AI ENGINEER CODE SUMMIT Join us in SF for the second annual AIE CODE Summit, Nov 10–12, our last flagship summit of 2026. Applications live now: https://aie.codes Michael Grinich, founder and CEO of WorkOS, argues that as agents run for hours and increasingly choose tools on their own, services have to make something agents want. The missing piece is agent registration: today's signup flows assume a human who can fill out forms, solve CAPTCHAs and copy API keys, and MCP auth still needs a person in the loop. He introduces auth.md, an open spec built on OAuth standards that tells agents how to register, then demos an agent that finds Cloudflare's auth.md, proves its identity with ID-JAG, gets a temporary account and deploys an app with no human signup. In this video: • Why login boxes and CAPTCHAs block legitimate agents • What an auth.md file declares for agent signup • Live demo: an agent registers with Cloudflare and deploys • Why payment should come after usage, not at signup SPEAKER Michael Grinich, Founder & CEO, WorkOS X: https://x.com/grinich LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/grinich LINKS auth.md: https://workos.com/auth-md auth.md spec (GitHub): https://github.com/workos/auth.md WorkOS: https://workos.com CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 0:32 From human-in-the-loop to autonomous coding 2:22 Lessons from autonomous vehicles 3:27 What agents need to succeed 4:27 Models as engines, harnesses as cars 5:27 Agents are choosing vendors 6:17 Make something agents want 6:52 Missing primitive: agent registration 7:32 Why signup flows block agents 9:12 What agent-native registration needs 10:26 Why MCP is not enough 11:06 Introducing auth.md 12:16 What an auth.md file describes 13:01 Demo: agent signs up for Cloudflare 15:56 Registration flow and ID-JAG 17:01 Benefits for builders and providers 18:46 Salesforce goes headless 19:26 Open spec on GitHub 19:51 Closing Recorded at the AI Engineer World's Fair 2026 in San Francisco. Subscribe for more talks from the engineers building with AI. AI Engineer: https://ai.engineer YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@aiDotEngineer X: https://x.com/aiDotEngineer LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aidotengineer/ #AIAgents #Auth #AIEngineer