What agents may do, and when to ask

Emboss publishes an agentic access contract: one document that labels every call an agent can make on Emboss, on every surface: the REST API, the pay-per-call API, the MCP connector's tools and the A2A agent's skills. Each label says what the call does, how serious it is, how long a sign-in for it should last, whether a person should approve it first, and whether it should be audited. Agent platforms and gateways read it to decide when to stop and ask.

JSON: https://getemboss.ai/agentic-access.json
YAML: https://getemboss.ai/agentic-access.yml

The labels use the x-agentic-access vocabulary (Curity's Access Intelligence model). The same label sits on every operation in the REST API description and the pay-per-call API description, in each MCP tool's _meta under ai.getemboss/agentic-access, and the A2A agent card links the contract.

When a person should approve

Calls	Ask a person first?
Reads: list forms, job status, usage, finding a library form	Never
Free work: PDF page tools, reading a proposal, attachments	Never
Paid work: making a form fillable, fills, checks, read-backs, packages, pay-per-call charges	Never
Sending a fax	Only for a burst: more than 10 faxes from one account within an hour. A new fax number alone needs no approval.
Deleting a form	Always: it removes the form and its files for good.
Creating, changing or revoking an API key	Only a person can, on the website; agents have no call for it.

Emboss itself holds no call for approval. The contract is guidance for the agent and the platform running it; Emboss's own limits, such as those on fax volume, apply either way.

What each label carries

action-class: connected for a read, acting for a call that changes something.
consequence: read or write.
subject: required when the call acts for a named account; optional for pay-per-call and other public calls, which a payment or nothing authorises.
scope: forms:read or forms:write on account calls.
token: a connector's access token lasts 3600 seconds (an hour) and renews automatically; API keys last until revoked.
escalation: present only on the calls that ask, above.
audit: required on every call that changes something, so the platform running the agent keeps its own record.
x-billed: on account calls, the kinds of charge the call can make. Pay-per-call calls are paid per call instead (x-authorization: per-call-payment).

Deleting a form leaves a record

When a form is deleted, Emboss keeps a record of when, and whether it was deleted on the website, through the API or through a connector, with the API key used if there was one. The record holds no document content.