What is a Relay plugin for AI agents?

People who search for a "Relay plugin" are usually trying to connect an AI agent to a real application without handing it a permanent password or a shared API key. They want something installable: a library, a hosted login flow, or a connector their agent runtime already understands.

Empyre Relay is that integration surface. It is not a plugin marketplace — there is no catalog of third-party Relay extensions on relay.empyre.dev as of 2026-09-15. What ships is a published npm SDK, a hosted OAuth service for agents, and a Model Context Protocol endpoint on the same host.

This page names those pieces, what problem they solve, and how they differ from Empyre the company builder — a separate product on the same account.

Why "plugin" is the wrong mental model — and what replaces it

In browser or CMS land, a plugin is a zip file you drop into a store. Relay has no equivalent store on the live site today. The product surface is developer tooling: register OAuth clients in a dashboard, install `@empyre/relay-sdk`, and call hosted endpoints at `api.empyre.dev`.

That is closer to "Stripe for agent login" than to "WordPress plugin." The agent gets short-lived, scoped tokens after a human approves once. Refresh rotation, one-time authorization codes, and fail-closed revoke and introspect are defaults, not checkboxes.

Relay has been feature-frozen since 2026-07-10 — bug and security fixes only, with the published SDK contract kept stable at `@empyre/relay-sdk` 1.0.0 on npm as of 2026-09-15. The one OAuth addition since freeze is scoped `GET /relay/oauth/userinfo` (2026-08-06), so relying parties can read a consented display name instead of inventing handles.

The three integration paths that answer a "Relay plugin" search

Each path solves a different layer of the same problem — agent identity and delegated access:

SDK quick path — agent signing into your app

The pattern below matches the published README and the live DeelFlow integration (deelflow.dev — first external Relay consumer verified live 200 on 2026-09-04). Replace the audience with your app's domain once your OAuth client is registered:

import { RelayClient } from "@empyre/relay-sdk";

const relay = new RelayClient({ audience: "your-app.example" });

const result = await relay.authenticateAgent(
  process.env.RELAY_AGENT_ID,
  process.env.RELAY_AGENT_SECRET,
);

if ("status" in result && result.status === "pending_approval") {
  // Owner approves by email; retry after approval.
} else {
  // Short-lived bearer token — verify via Relay introspection.
  useToken(result.access_token);
}

Continue with Relay in a human-facing app

For a sign-in button in a web app, the SDK's PKCE helpers generate the authorize URL, store state once, and exchange the callback code with the matching verifier. That is the same OAuth 2.1 shape human providers use — Relay's difference is defaults aimed at unattended agents: rotation, replay detection on refresh, and scopes that mean something when nobody is watching the screen.

Generated companies on Empyre can ship "Continue with Relay" on their sign-in page using Empyre's own mark — the platform seeds that path for apps it builds. Third-party apps integrate the same SDK against clients they register in Relay; DeelFlow is the reference external deployment on a non-Empyre domain.

Relay Platform vs Relay Identity (both use the same SDK)

Pricing and plans — read from relay.empyre.dev/pricing on 2026-09-15

Relay bills separately from Empyre company-builder plans. Self-serve tiers on relay.empyre.dev/pricing on 2026-09-15 list Free at $0 with 10K auth requests per month and one project; Developer at $49/mo with 500K requests and ten projects; Team at $299/mo with 5M requests and fifty projects; Enterprise as custom invoice via Contact Sales.

An auth request counts each OAuth token issuance and refresh your registered clients perform — not arbitrary API traffic on your app. Card checkout runs through Stripe; Relay subscriptions live in Relay's own tables and do not read Empyre's `profiles.plan`.

If a figure on the live pricing page disagrees with this paragraph, trust the page — it is the checkout source of truth.

Where Empyre the company builder fits

Empyre (empyre.dev) is a different product on the same login: eight agents that build and operate a whole business after launch. Relay does not replace that; it solves agent OAuth and identity for developers who already have an app or agent runtime.

Vault (vault.empyre.dev) and Ledger (ledger.empyre.dev) are the other two sibling products — secret storage and signing, and double-entry books — each with its own MCP URL and SDK. They are relevant when the failure mode is keys on a server, not when the only missing piece is delegated login.

Competitors in Empyre's operator category — Polsia, Naïve, Egbe, Polycorp, Agentiq — are not answers to a Relay-plugin query. Compare them only if the search intent drifts from agent auth to "run my company for me."

Common questions

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