Open standard · live demo

AI agents can act.
Now they ask you first.

AllowedBy gives an AI agent a human's yes in one passkey tap, on the exact sentence the service wrote. Any service then checks who the agent is and who allowed it, offline, in a single request.

No passwords or cards handed to agentsOne tap on your phone or laptopFree for services to verify
Order the coffee beans and a mug, delivered to me
Pantry & Co needs your OK. Check the code K7QM and tap.
✓AskMyHuman · written by Pantry & Co
Order 2 items for 21.80 EUR, delivered to your home, once
Same code as in your chat?K7QM
Done. Order #1042 is placed.
200 · grant verified offline
The problem

Agents are ready to act. The web has no way to say yes.

Assistants can now shop, sign up, pay invoices and change bookings. But nothing tells a service who the agent is, or which human allowed this action.

🔑

Agents borrow your keys

Today an agent works with your password, your API key or your card. The service can't tell it from you, and it can do everything you can.

❓

Services fly blind

A good agent looks like a scraper. "Who allowed this payment?" has no answer an auditor would accept.

💬

The agent writes its own question

"Confirm?" dialogs are written by the agent. An agent tricked by a web page can soften what it asks you to approve.

So services choose between handing over the keys and blocking agents. AllowedBy is the third option.

How it works

Ask, tap, verified.

The same three steps for a coffee order, a SaaS sign-up or a €50,000 payment run. Only the strength of the identity check changes.

The agent asks

It tries the action. Without a yes, the service answers with a link, a four-letter code and a sentence written by the service. The agent can't change that sentence.

You tap once

You open the link and check that the code matches the one in your chat. Then you approve with your passkey (Face ID, Windows Hello, a security key). You sign the service's sentence, not the agent's summary.

Any service verifies

The agent retries with two signed headers: its passport (who it is) and your grant (who allowed it). The service checks both offline. It never calls anyone and pays nothing.

# 1. no yes yet: the service answers with a link and a code
HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized
WWW-Authenticate: AllowedBy action="orders:place", level="1",
  approve="https://demo.upto.tech/a/01JB3K7Q…", code="K7QM"

# 2. you tap · 3. the agent retries with proof; checked offline
POST /orders   Allowed-By: eyJ0eXAiOiJhYnktZ3JhbnQrand0Ii…   AllowedBy-Proof: …
HTTP/1.1 201 Created
L0A known agent from a known operator
L1A person with a passkey
L2A verified identity (eIDAS substantial, EU wallet)
L3eIDAS high plus a hardware passkey
QESA qualified signature, where the law needs one

Each service sets the level per action: reading a catalogue needs L0, paying an invoice L2, releasing a payment run L3 with two approvers.

Who it's for

One yes, three wins.

  • Let your assistant do the errandsShopping, bookings, cancellations, sign-ups. It asks, you tap, it's done.
  • Never hand over a password or a cardThe agent carries a yes that's limited to this action, this amount and this period.
  • Budgets and an off switch"Up to €50 a week at this shop." See every agent and every grant in one wallet. Revoke any of them in one tap.
  • Share only what you tickEach app knows you by a different id. Your name, email or address go only where you allow, and the wallet keeps the receipt.

Try it as a person

Open the shop, give its address to your AI assistant, and approve the order with your own passkey.

Why it's different

The missing piece between identity and payments.

Identity providers know agents inside one company. Payment networks handle the money. Nobody carries a human's signed yes for any action, from one company to another.

AllowedByAgent identity in an IdPAgent payment mandatesBot authentication"Confirm?" in the agent
Works across companies✓within one tenant✓✓–
The person signs the service's own wording✓–the basket––
Who allowed it, checkable offline✓token only✓––
Identity strength per action (L0–L3, QES)✓login onlycard holder––
Actions that aren't payments✓✓––✓
Open, federated, any vendor or model✓–per network✓–

Built on standards you already trust

Passkeys (WebAuthn)eIDAS and the EU Digital Identity WalletOpenID Connect SCIMHTTP Message Signatures (RFC 9421)SD-JWT VCTransparency logs (C2SP) OpenAPI 3.1Model Context ProtocolWeb Bot Auth
For investors

The consent layer for the agent economy.

Agents are moving from chatting to acting. Every action that matters will need proof that a person allowed it, at the right identity level and across company lines. AllowedBy is that proof, as an open standard with a commercial network behind it.

$190–500BUS commerce run by agents in 2030Morgan Stanley base to Bain high
$7.8–11.1BNon-human identity security, 2025Mordor, Research & Markets
$2.77BPayments diverted by business email compromise, US, 2024FBI IC3
€0.8–1.0BYearly spend if every finance approver paid list priceBottom-up, est.

Why now

Assistants already shop, sign up and file expenses. Every EU member state must offer the EU Digital Identity Wallet by the end of 2026. The EU AI Act asks for human oversight of high-risk systems. The proof of a human's yes has no standard yet. The first network that services trust becomes the default.

Business model

Verifying stays free, so every service can accept AllowedBy. Revenue comes from the node network, which onboards agents, verifies people and sells company control and evidence. Finance approvals are priced per approver: €4–8 a month (est.). Merchants pay for outcomes, never for checks.

Step 1 · now

Agent-ready SaaS

"Continue with AllowedBy" on sign-up and login pages, enabled in minutes. Agents sign up to APIs and tools with a verified person behind them. Services pay per new customer. Supplier onboarding through Flowie comes first.

Step 2 · next

Fleet control for large companies

Their staff's agents are already on the network from step 1. Companies then buy the inventory, sharing policies, offboarding, approval rules and evidence, priced per employee.

Then

Consumer actions

One ticket per person, cancellations, returns, age checks. Sold through fraud and bot vendors, who pay per signal.

Where it stands

Sixteen specification documents at version 0.2.9 (draft). A working reference implementation: home node, wallet, approval page, SDK, company console and five example sites, live on this domain. 193 end-to-end scenarios and 368 test vectors pass on every commit.

Moat

A two-sided network: services accept the grant because people carry one, and people enrol because services ask for it. A public transparency log, federated nodes and conformance profiles let the standard spread. The node network and the evidence it holds stay the business.

Market figures are published analyst ranges; analysts disagree by two to four times. Figures marked est. are our own assumptions.

Live demo

Try it now, with your own passkey.

Five example sites accept agents, and one home node holds your wallet. Everything is live and real, except that identity checks for L2 and L3 are simulated.

Give an AI assistant a site's address and ask, for example: On shop.demo.upto.tech, buy coffee beans and a mug, delivered to me. You'll get a link to approve with your passkey.

Let agents do the work.
Keep the yes with people.

AllowedBy is an open standard for human approval of AI agents, and a network that makes it work.