NHI

Non-human identity: the identity of an agent, service account or machine actor. Every NHI gets a registry entry, an owner and a scope before it is allowed to act.

Developed in
ch. 05, Pattern: Agent Identity & Scoped Credentials
ch. 23, Identity and short-lived credentials
Chapters
ch. 04, The Stack · ch. 05, Patterns · ch. 23, AI Agents
Contrast with
Workload identity
Source
Defined by this Body of Knowledge: the section it is developed in is the source

Where it is used

3 chapters of the Body of Knowledge use the term. Each link opens the first section that does.

Sources

No external source: the term is coined or used in a specific sense by this Body of Knowledge, and the section linked under "Developed in" is its source.

Definitions of legal terms paraphrase the cited text, which governs. Dated statements are as of .

Cite this term

García Aibar, J. (2026). NHI. In AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis & Body of Knowledge (v0.5.0), Glossary. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22956197. https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/nhi. CC BY 4.0

BibTeX

@misc{aige2026nhi,
  author  = {Jorge García Aibar},
  title   = {{NHI}},
  note    = {Glossary, AI Governance Engineering: The Thesis \& Body of Knowledge, version 0.5.0},
  year    = {2026},
  doi     = {10.5281/zenodo.22956197},
  url     = {https://aigovernanceengineer.com/glossary/nhi}
}