Stop Storing Secrets in Your Database: The Token Vault Pattern for AI Agents

As AI agents increasingly access third-party services like GitHub and Google Calendar on behalf of users, storing OAuth tokens in application databases becomes a critical security liability. This pattern proposes delegating credential storage to identity providers and using RFC 8693 token exchange to issue short-lived, scoped tokens at runtime—eliminating database breaches as a path to user account compromise. The approach also eliminates the burden of maintaining token refresh logic for every provider.