name: entra-agent-id description: | Microsoft Entra Agent ID (preview) for creating OAuth2-capable AI agent identities via Microsoft Graph beta API. Covers Agent Identity Blueprints, BlueprintPrincipals, Agent Identities, required permissions, sponsors, and Workload Identity Federation. Includes Microsoft Entra SDK for AgentID (containerized sidecar) for polyglot agent authentication (Docker/Kubernetes), 3P agent integration, autonomous and interactive agent patterns. Triggers: "agent identity", "agent id", "Agent Identity Blueprint", "BlueprintPrincipal", "entra agent", "agent identity provisioning", "Graph agent identity", "entra sidecar", "agent id sidecar", "auth sidecar", "3P agent", "third-party agent identity", "polyglot agent auth".

Microsoft Entra Agent ID

Create and manage OAuth2-capable identities for AI agents using Microsoft Graph beta API.

Preview API — All Agent Identity endpoints are under /beta only. Not available in /v1.0.

Before You Start

Search microsoft-docs MCP for the latest Agent ID documentation:

• Query: "Microsoft Entra agent identity setup"
• Verify: API parameters match current preview behavior

Conceptual Model

Agent Identity Blueprint (application)        ← one per agent type/project
  └── BlueprintPrincipal (service principal)   ← MUST be created explicitly
        ├── Agent Identity (SP): agent-1       ← one per agent instance
        ├── Agent Identity (SP): agent-2
        └── Agent Identity (SP): agent-3

Prerequisites

PowerShell (recommended for interactive setup)

# Requires PowerShell 7+
Install-Module Microsoft.Graph.Beta.Applications -Scope CurrentUser -Force

Python (for programmatic provisioning)

pip install azure-identity requests

Required Entra Roles

One of: Agent Identity Developer, Agent Identity Administrator, or Application Administrator.

Environment Variables

AZURE_TENANT_ID=<your-tenant-id>
AZURE_CLIENT_ID=<app-registration-client-id>
AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET=<app-registration-secret>

Authentication

⚠️ DefaultAzureCredential is NOT supported. Azure CLI tokens contain Directory.AccessAsUser.All, which Agent Identity APIs explicitly reject (403). You MUST use a dedicated app registration with client_credentials flow or connect via Connect-MgGraph with explicit delegated scopes.

PowerShell (delegated permissions)

Connect-MgGraph -Scopes @(
    "AgentIdentityBlueprint.Create",
    "AgentIdentityBlueprint.ReadWrite.All",
    "AgentIdentityBlueprintPrincipal.Create",
    "User.Read"
)
Set-MgRequestContext -ApiVersion beta

$currentUser = (Get-MgContext).Account
$userId = (Get-MgUser -UserId $currentUser).Id

Python (application permissions)

import os
import requests
from azure.identity import ClientSecretCredential

credential = ClientSecretCredential(
    tenant_id=os.environ["AZURE_TENANT_ID"],
    client_id=os.environ["AZURE_CLIENT_ID"],
    client_secret=os.environ["AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET"],
)
token = credential.get_token("https://graph.microsoft.com/.default")

GRAPH = "https://graph.microsoft.com/beta"
headers = {
    "Authorization": f"Bearer {token.token}",
    "Content-Type": "application/json",
    "OData-Version": "4.0",  # Required for all Agent Identity API calls
}

Core Workflow

Step 1: Create Agent Identity Blueprint

Sponsors are required and must be User objects — ServicePrincipals and Groups are rejected.

import subprocess

# Get sponsor user ID (client_credentials has no user context, so use az CLI)
result = subprocess.run(
    ["az", "ad", "signed-in-user", "show", "--query", "id", "-o", "tsv"],
    capture_output=True, text=True, check=True,
)
user_id = result.stdout.strip()

blueprint_body = {
    "@odata.type": "Microsoft.Graph.AgentIdentityBlueprint",
    "displayName": "My Agent Blueprint",
    "sponsors@odata.bind": [
        f"https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/users/{user_id}"
    ],
}
resp = requests.post(f"{GRAPH}/applications", headers=headers, json=blueprint_body)
resp.raise_for_status()

blueprint = resp.json()
app_id = blueprint["appId"]
blueprint_obj_id = blueprint["id"]

Step 2: Create BlueprintPrincipal

This step is mandatory. Creating a Blueprint does NOT auto-create its service principal. Without this, Agent Identity creation fails with: 400: The Agent Blueprint Principal for the Agent Blueprint does not exist.

sp_body = {
    "@odata.type": "Microsoft.Graph.AgentIdentityBlueprintPrincipal",
    "appId": app_id,
}
resp = requests.post(f"{GRAPH}/servicePrincipals", headers=headers, json=sp_body)
resp.raise_for_status()

If implementing idempotent scripts, check for and create the BlueprintPrincipal even when the Blueprint already exists (a previous run may have created the Blueprint but crashed before creating the SP).

Step 3: Create Agent Identities

agent_body = {
    "@odata.type": "Microsoft.Graph.AgentIdentity",
    "displayName": "my-agent-instance-1",
    "agentIdentityBlueprintId": app_id,
    "sponsors@odata.bind": [
        f"https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/users/{user_id}"
    ],
}
resp = requests.post(f"{GRAPH}/servicePrincipals", headers=headers, json=agent_body)
resp.raise_for_status()
agent = resp.json()

API Reference

All endpoints use base URL: https://graph.microsoft.com/beta

Required Permissions

There are 18 Agent Identity-specific Graph application permissions. Discover all:

az ad sp show --id 00000003-0000-0000-c000-000000000000 \
  --query "appRoles[?contains(value, 'AgentIdentity')].{id:id, value:value}" -o json

Grant admin consent (required for application permissions):

az ad app permission admin-consent --id <client-id>

Admin consent may fail with 404 if the service principal hasn't replicated. Retry with 10–40s backoff.

Cleanup

# Delete Agent Identity
requests.delete(f"{GRAPH}/servicePrincipals/{agent['id']}", headers=headers)

# Delete BlueprintPrincipal (get SP ID first)
sps = requests.get(
    f"{GRAPH}/servicePrincipals?$filter=appId eq '{app_id}'",
    headers=headers,
).json()
for sp in sps.get("value", []):
    requests.delete(f"{GRAPH}/servicePrincipals/{sp['id']}", headers=headers)

# Delete Blueprint
requests.delete(f"{GRAPH}/applications/{blueprint_obj_id}", headers=headers)

Best Practices

1. Always create BlueprintPrincipal after Blueprint — not auto-created; implement idempotent checks on both
2. Use User objects as sponsors — ServicePrincipals and Groups are rejected
3. Handle permission propagation delays — after admin consent, wait 30–120s; retry with backoff on 403
4. Include OData-Version: 4.0 header on every Graph request
5. Use Workload Identity Federation for production auth — for local dev, use a client secret on the Blueprint (see references/oauth2-token-flow.md)
6. Set identifierUris on Blueprint before using OAuth2 scoping (api://{app-id})
7. Never use Azure CLI tokens for API calls — they contain Directory.AccessAsUser.All which is hard-rejected
8. Check for existing resources before creating — implement idempotent provisioning

References

External Links