Least-privilege file access proxy for AI agents
Problem
People want AI agents (like Muse or Claude) to work on a single Google Drive file, but the only options are granting access to the entire Drive or sharing the file with 'anyone with the link' - both unacceptable from a security standpoint. Webhooks and burner accounts are too tedious to set up repeatedly. This is a growing permission-management gap as agent usage explodes.
Opportunity
A proxy/permission layer that sits between cloud storage (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) and AI agents, issuing per-file, time-limited, read/write-scoped credentials the agent can use - like 'OAuth for agents' with expiry and audit logs.
Market analysis
Real and fast-growing pain: OAuth scopes are service-level, so agents get all-or-nothing access to Drive, and the MCP ecosystem is racing to fill exactly this gap. Enterprise players (Cloudflare, Permit, Kong, Strac) are already landing on the territory, but they target security teams, not the individual prosumer who just wants to share one file with Claude.
Market · Security-conscious developers and prosumers running agents against personal/SMB cloud storage; demand signal is strong (MCP gateway category exploding, MCP write traffic up massively quarter over quarter).
Pricing · MCP gateways are enterprise usage-based; the prosumer 'share one file safely' slot at roughly $5-15/month is currently empty.
Pros
- + Genuine, unsolved gap at the prosumer level: no one offers per-file, time-boxed agent credentials.
- + MCP standardization gives a clean interception point instead of per-provider hacks.
- + Audit log of what the agent actually touched is a compelling, demo-able hook.
Cons
- − Enterprise land grab already underway (Cloudflare WriteGuard, Permit, Kong, Strac) with far more resources.
- − Trust paradox: a proxy that sees all your files can be scarier than the problem it solves.
- − Platform risk: Google or Anthropic shipping fine-grained scopes natively kills the wedge overnight.
Existing / similar tools
Source
Hacker News (Ask HN)
The hard part is not the proxying, it is the trust. Any tool that stands between an agent and your Drive must itself be granted broad access, so a solo builder asking users to pipe their files through an unknown SaaS has a chicken-and-egg credibility problem that incumbents with existing security brands do not. The most viable solo path is an open-source, self-hosted MCP gateway with per-file, expiring tokens, monetized later via a hosted tier for teams. Note also that the June 2026 Enterprise-Managed Authorization extension to the MCP spec is moving this problem into identity providers, so the window for an independent wedge may be shorter than it looks.