Building User-Aware AI Agents with MCP and Serverless
Summary
This architecture combines AI agents, Model Context Protocol (MCP), and serverless computing to create user-aware AI systems capable of operating securely across diverse company systems. It tackles traditional AI authentication challenges by implementing a sophisticated JWT propagation pattern, ensuring user identity is cryptographically verified throughout the request chain. MCP acts as a crucial link, allowing AI to discover and integrate specialized tools as microservices, fostering composable, domain-specific intelligence hubs rather than monolithic applications. Serverless computing, leveraging API Gateway, Lambda, and S3, provides stateless execution, automatic scaling, and cost efficiency, with S3 managing external session state for conversation history and tool results. This approach supports dynamic authorization and tool composition, enabling robust enterprise, healthcare, and financial AI applications that are truly multi-tenant, composable, secure by default, and infinitely scalable.
Key takeaway
For AI Architects designing enterprise-grade AI agents, this architecture offers a robust framework for secure, multi-tenant deployments. You should adopt JWT propagation for identity, integrate tools via Model Context Protocol (MCP) as microservices, and utilize serverless platforms for scalable, cost-efficient execution. Externalizing session state to S3 ensures portability and auditability. This approach allows you to build intelligent systems that safely orchestrate distributed business processes while maintaining user context and security.
Key insights
Combining MCP, serverless, and JWT propagation enables secure, scalable, user-aware AI agents across enterprise systems.
Principles
- Treat AI tools as microservices.
- Enforce policy at the tool level.
- Externalize AI agent session state.
Method
Implement JWT propagation for identity. Use MCP servers for tool integration. Deploy on serverless (API Gateway, Lambda, S3) with S3 for external session state.
In practice
- Use S3 for portable agent session state.
- Implement JWT refresh for dynamic permissions.
- Compose MCP servers for tool hierarchies.
Topics
- AI Agents
- Model Context Protocol
- Serverless Computing
- JWT Propagation
- Microservices Architecture
- Session Management
Best for: AI Engineer, AI Architect, AI Security Engineer
Related on AIssential
Editorial summary, takeaway, and curation by AIssential. Original article published by HackerNoon.