agentid

An agentid (agent identifier) is a unique label assigned to an agent—such as a software agent, service, device, or user-operated actor—in a computer system. The identifier serves as a stable reference for addressing the agent, attributing actions to it, and applying policy or access controls. Agentids are typically created during provisioning or registration and stored in an identity store or directory service, and they are designed to be globally unique within the scope of the system.

In distributed systems and software development, agentids enable inter-agent messaging, logging, and auditing. In multi-agent architectures, messages are addressed with the recipient's agentid to route to the correct agent. In monitoring and tracing, an agentid is attached to telemetry to correlate events with the responsible agent. In security contexts, the agentid acts as a principal in authorization decisions and as a traceable audit artifact.

Common formats include UUIDs, numeric IDs, or structured strings that combine a namespace with a local ID, such as namespace:agentid or agentid-<id>. The choice depends on system requirements, such as privacy, readability, and integration with existing identity frameworks. Good practices include ensuring uniqueness, supporting revocation and rotation, and minimizing exposure of sensitive parts of the identifier. When agents are ephemeral, systems may distinguish between a long-lived agentid and a short-lived session identifier for temporary work.

Related concepts include client identifiers in authentication protocols, principal naming, and telemetry tagging. Proper management of agentids is essential for reliable auditing, access control, and system observability.

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