Introduction

Tool Authorization Protocol

Every API call an agent makes carries your credentials. TAP replaces raw tokens with named credential references the agent can’t read, so a leaked, jailbroken, or prompt-injected agent has nothing to steal or misuse.

TAP sits between agents and services: agents reference credentials by name, and TAP resolves and injects the real token without surfacing it. On top of that, you can add an approval checkpoint on any credential where you want a human in the loop — the approver sees the full payload before the request is forwarded.

Before and After

Your agent’s code barely changes:

# Before: agent holds the raw credential
Authorization: Bearer xoxb-your-slack-bot-token

# After: agent uses a name, TAP handles the rest
X-TAP-Credential: slack
X-TAP-Target: https://slack.com/api/chat.postMessage
X-TAP-Method: POST
  • Credential isolation — agents never see actual secret values, so a jailbroken or compromised agent can’t exfiltrate your Gmail, Slack, or Mercury tokens. This is on for every credential, always.
  • Response sanitization — if an API response includes your token (e.g. an OAuth introspection endpoint), TAP strips it before the agent sees it
  • Optional human-in-the-loop approval — turn on an Approve / Deny checkpoint (dashboard, Telegram, Matrix, or passkey) for any credential where you want one. TAP sends the exact payload before the request goes through. Configurable per credential.
  • Audit trail — every request logged with agent, credential, approval status, and latency

Managed hosting at tap.human.tech is the recommended way to get started. Self-hosting is open source under Apache-2.0.

Get Started

Hosted agent (Claude, ChatGPT)? Add one custom connector URL — https://mcp.tap.human.tech/mcp — and authorize in the browser. See Connect Claude & ChatGPT.

Agent that can curl (Claude Code, Cursor, scripts)? Give it these two lines:

TAP API key: <API key from the dashboard>
TAP instructions: https://proxy.tap.human.tech/instructions

Your agent fetches that URL and discovers how to use your configured services — no custom integration code needed.

Quickstart