a2a-authentication

a2a-authentication is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from OrcaQubits/agentic-commerce-skills-plugins. It costs 47 tokens per session (985 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for protecting communication between A2A agents, where A2A is a protocol for agents to call one another. It covers API keys, bearer tokens, OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, and mutual TLS, and how required security is declared in an Agent Card.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to secure agent-to-agent APIs and configure their authentication middleware. It helps choose and implement the required security scheme for an Agent Card.
Why use it?
Agents need to identify callers and control who may use their services. Declaring and configuring authentication prevents clients and servers from relying on unclear or inconsistent credential handling.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the a2a-multi-agent plugin — 16 skills, 1 agent, 1 hook shipped together

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/orcaqubits/agentic-commerce-skills-plugins/a2a-authentication
Any agent
npx skills add OrcaQubits/agentic-commerce-skills-plugins --skill a2a-authentication
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/OrcaQubits/agentic-commerce-skills-plugins

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install a2a-multi-agent, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 16 skills, 1 agent, 1 hook.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for a2a-authentication

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/orcaqubits/agentic-commerce-skills-plugins/a2a-authentication.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/orcaqubits/agentic-commerce-skills-plugins/a2a-authentication)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/orcaqubits/agentic-commerce-skills-plugins/a2a-authentication"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/orcaqubits/agentic-commerce-skills-plugins/a2a-authentication.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 47 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 985 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00047 $0.00985
Opus 5 $0.00023 $0.00492
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00197
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00098

Measured 5d ago against content hash 2411bf030d7c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

a2a-authentication scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 5d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

a2a-multi-agent/skills/a2a-authentication/SKILL.md · 111 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 111 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

A2A Authentication

Before writing code

Fetch live docs:

  1. Fetch https://a2a-protocol.org/latest/specification/ for the authentication and security section
  2. Web-search site:github.com a2aproject A2A authentication security schemes for auth scheme details
  3. Web-search site:github.com a2aproject a2a-samples authentication for auth implementation examples
  4. Fetch SDK docs for authentication middleware and client credential handling

Conceptual Architecture

Why Authentication Matters

In multi-agent systems, agents must verify each other's identity and authorize access:

  • Server agents need to know who's calling them and whether they're authorized
  • Client agents need to present valid credentials to access server agents
  • Agent Cards declare what authentication is required upfront

Five Security Schemes

A2A supports the same security scheme types as OpenAPI 3.0:

1. API Key (apiKey)

A static key sent in a header or query parameter.

  • Best for: Internal agents, simple integrations, development
  • Agent Card declares: Header name and location
  • Client provides: The key value in the specified header
2. HTTP Bearer (http with scheme: bearer)

A bearer token (JWT or opaque) in the Authorization header.

  • Best for: Token-based auth, service-to-service with JWTs
  • Agent Card declares: Bearer scheme, optional format hint
  • Client provides: Authorization: Bearer <token>
3. OAuth 2.0 (oauth2)

Standard OAuth 2.0 flows for token acquisition.

  • Best for: Production systems, fine-grained scopes, delegated access
  • Agent Card declares: OAuth flows (clientCredentials, authorizationCode), token URL, scopes
  • Client provides: Access token obtained from the OAuth server

Common flow for agent-to-agent: Client Credentials (machine-to-machine, no user involvement).

4. OpenID Connect (openIdConnect)

OIDC discovery-based authentication.

  • Best for: Enterprise systems with identity providers, SSO environments
  • Agent Card declares: OIDC discovery URL (openIdConnectUrl)
  • Client provides: Token obtained via OIDC flow

Read the full file on GitHub · 111 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 5d ago First seen · 111 lines · 47 tokens per session scan A 2411bf030d7c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

a2a-authentication is a skill published in the GitHub repository OrcaQubits/agentic-commerce-skills-plugins (39 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 47 tokens to every session and 985 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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