What is OAuth Scopes?

When you click Connect Google, the consent screen listing what the app can see is a list of scopes. Each is a named permission — read-only calendar, send mail, per-file drive access — and the token you get back carries only those. Ask for read-only and the API will refuse a write, no matter what the code tries. The principle is least privilege: request the narrowest scope that does the job. It's also a trust signal. An app asking for full Drive access to attach one file is telling you something.

Scopes are the outermost fence around an AI agent, and they're enforced by the provider — not by the model, the prompt, or anyone's good intentions. That makes them the backstop when everything else fails: a prompt-injected agent still cannot send mail with a read-only token. Velaris narrows it further by scoping credentials per run, so a run holds only the access its task needs, for as long as the task lasts. Scopes bound what's possible; approval tiers bound what proceeds without you.