In the emerging era of Autonomous Agents, software is moving from Chat to Action. Agents must interact with a multitude of external APIs, SaaS platforms, and cloud services to perform useful work. However, the existing authentication infrastructure is designed for interactive humans (SSO, 1Password) or static servers (hardcoded secrets) which is fundamentally ill-suited for dynamic, long-running agent fleets. This mismatch leads to the "N+1 Problem," where every new integration requires bespoke authentication logic, creating security risks and development bottlenecks. This paper introduces the Nexus Protocol, a standardized open protocol for Agent Identity and Connection Orchestration. Nexus decouples the Authentication Mechanics (headers, signatures, tokens) from the Agent Logic. By delegating identity management to a central Authority, agents become Universal Adapters, capable of connecting to any service without code changes, driven entirely by server-side policy.
Mwenyinyo Sangalo (Tue,) studied this question.