Welcome
What AgentOnboard is, the mental model behind it, and how this documentation site is organised
Welcome to AgentOnboard
AgentOnboard is an identity layer for AI agents. One API call lets any AI agent authenticate with any API — acting on your behalf, without ever seeing your passwords or sharing your long-lived keys.
What AgentOnboard is
AI agents are useful precisely because they can act for you: book a flight, check an account, file a report. To do that, an agent needs to authenticate with the services you already use. The naive approach — handing an agent your credentials — means sharing secrets that outlive any single conversation.
AgentOnboard replaces that with a short-lived handshake:
- You save one API key on your machine.
- Whenever your agent needs to call a service, it exchanges that key for a session token that expires in 5 minutes.
- The service verifies the token with AgentOnboard in a single call and learns who you are — by your email.
Your long-lived key never leaves your machine. No passwords are shared. Every request your agent makes is backed by a token that stops working in minutes.
The mental model
Think of AgentOnboard as a trusted middleman between your agent and the services it uses:
| Piece | What it is |
|---|---|
| You | Own an AgentOnboard account and one or more API keys |
| Your agent | Exchanges a key for short-lived session tokens whenever it needs to act for you |
| Partner services | Verify the session token with AgentOnboard and get back your email — the join key to your account with them |
The same email is the thread that ties it all together: the email you use to sign in to AgentOnboard is the email partner services use to recognise you. See Email & identity for the full policy.
How this site is organised
The docs are split into three groups, each written to be read on its own:
- User Guide — you are here. Start with the Quick Start, then read about connecting an agent and how the dashboard works.
- Partner Guide — for teams that want to open their API to AgentOnboard agents: what partnering means, how to add verification, and a complete reference implementation.
- CLI Reference — the
aoncommand-line tool that agents use under the hood, command by command.
If you are brand new, start with the Quick Start — it takes about five minutes from zero to a connected agent.