Least privilege

An established security principle that any actor should be granted only the access it needs to perform its assigned task, for only as long as it needs it. Applied to an agent, it means building up authority from zero and adding back only provably-needed capabilities, rather than granting broad access and trying to remember what to remove.

A security principle stating that software should hold only the smallest set of permissions needed to perform its actual function, and nothing more. This topic's three question test (still used, purpose requires it, explainable out loud) applies this principle to a personal device audit.

The principle that an agent (or any account) is granted the minimum access its role requires and no more, reviewed on a schedule and revoked on any anomaly. On the frontier, least-privilege tool scoping is the control that MCP's ease of connection makes most important.

The design principle that an agent should hold only the minimum tools and data access needed to complete its actual task, no more. Named directly in the framework's own "Agent limits" guidance (MGF p.19) and developed in full through this topic's Section 3G method.

Granting an agent only the minimum data and system access its one job requires, and denying everything else, so that even a confused or tricked agent can do only bounded damage. The small-business slice of the deep access-control discipline in Topic 10.7.