Human continuity for apps and agents.

Recognize the same human across accounts, devices, and agents through a private identifier for your application.

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Human continuity

Human Continuity gives your application a stable way to recognize the same human across their accounts, devices, and agents while preserving privacy.

Welcome people back, carry reputation forward, and create experiences that grow more valuable with every interaction.

What you can build

Build durable reputation

Let credibility, contribution history, and community standing grow over time using a private identifier scoped to your sector.

Protect scarce benefits

Apply eligibility, claim limits, and participation rules consistently across every interaction with the same human.

Power human-backed agents

Give agent experiences a persistent connection to the human who authorized them, with fresh authentication for important actions.

Recover established accounts

Reconnect a returning human to their account in your application from a new device through the same continuity identifier.

Enforce lasting consequences

Carry suspensions, bans, and trust decisions across accounts, devices, and agents linked to the same continuity relationship.

Private recognition

Applications registered in the same sector receive the same stable identifier for a given World ID account. Applications in different sectors receive different identifiers.

One World ID account, viewed by three applications
Application A · sector A
private-id-A
Application B · sector B
private-id-B
Application C · sector A
private-id-A

Illustrative values. Application C receives the same identifier when it is registered in Application A’s sector. See sector configuration.

Use this identifier to recognize the person within your sector and manage your application's own data.

Fresh authentication

Add fresh World ID authentication to your existing sign-in when an experience calls for stronger assurance. Ask the person to authenticate before a sensitive action, then check the result in your backend.

Your application decides whether the authenticated person may perform the action.

Use the stable identifier to recognize a returning person and authentication time to decide when to ask them to authenticate again.

Powered by World ID

People authenticate with an enrolled passkey or a World ID proof. World IdP makes the authentication result available through OpenID Connect (OIDC), keeping the underlying World identity and proof private from your application.

OIDC delivers the private identifier as the pairwise sub (subject) claim. The application stores the issuer and subject together to recognize the same World ID account over time.

For agent experiences, your application uses OIDC in the same way: it links the issuer and subject to its own account or grant, then issues credentials for its APIs or MCP server.

Integration guides

Keep your existing sign-in and add World ID for sensitive actions. For agent workflows, add a human checkpoint that requires fresh authentication before your application resumes the workflow.

Recommended starting point

Step-up authentication

Require recent World ID authentication before a sensitive action, through your backend or auth server. Read the step-up guide →

Human in the loop

Require fresh World ID authentication before your application resumes an agent workflow. Your application handles any separate approval of the action. Works with your existing sign-in or World ID as your primary sign-in. Read the human checkpoint instructions →

Client setup

Configure your OIDC client, callback URLs, and credentials in the developer portal, with optional help from a coding agent. Read the client setup guide → Optional

Primary sign-in

Use World ID as your primary or only sign-in, directly or through your auth server. Read the OIDC primary sign-in instructions →

Standards

These references describe the protocols and application integrations covered by these guides. Each environment’s discovery metadata lists the flows and options supported by its issuer.

OpenID Connect

OAuth

JOSE

MCP clients are discovered through the current OAuth Client ID Metadata Document draft.