Coming to you from the #AppWorld2026 Hub, #F5's Joel Moses and guest co-pilot Oscar Spencer cut through the conference polish to tackle a problem that’s quickly becoming unavoidable: identity in the era of #agenticAI. When software can act on your behalf, take initiative, and even spawn other agents, “who did what” stops being a philosophical question and becomes an audit, security, and governance requirement. Joined by F5's Chief Product Officer, Kunal Anand, the conversation digs into why traditional, point-in-time authentication and authorization models don’t map cleanly to agents that operate over time, across contexts, and through chains of delegation. They explore the risks of transitive identity, the expanding blast radius when Agent A creates Agents B and C, and the uncomfortable reality that agents can end up holding the same kinds of long-lived secrets that have historically caused production incidents. Along the way, they discuss emerging ideas like https://go.f5.net/vv76gpjd files that define an agent’s purpose and constraints, and the concept of a dedicated “credential agent” that acts as a gatekeeper for secrets access. The episode also gets practical about what breaks in the real world, including a cautionary story about an agent corrupting a long-running notes database, underscoring why backups, guardrails, and careful rollout matter. If you’re building or adopting agents, this is a timely look at why identity can’t stay static, why service-account thinking is coming for every agent, and what it will take to keep autonomy from turning into the next incident report. Chapters: 00:00 Welcome to Pop Goes the Stack 00:34 The agent identity crisis: “who am I right now?” 01:05 Identity, access, and trust with shapeshifting agents 02:05 Key rule: agents aren’t “you” (audit logs must show the chain) 02:59 soul.md: giving agents a purpose (and existential dread) 04:44 The scary part: agents creating other agents 07:46 Transactional vs on-behalf-of identities 10:09 Fun phase vs experimentation risk: Understanding agentic AI's blast radius 12:09 Where do credentials live? The “credential agent” idea 15:16 SPIFFE/SPIRE and the need for a new protocol for purpose 18:40 War story: Claude corrupted 25 years of Apple Notes (have backups!) Learn how you can stay ahead of the curve and keep your stack whole with additional insights on app security, multicloud, AI, and emerging tech: https://go.f5.net/oavcfc7j More about F5: https://go.f5.net/3ictkzz9 Read our blog: https://go.f5.net/y9doypjf Follow us on LinkedIn: https://go.f5.net/b7cdnwo4

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