Last week I tried Google's Jules coding agent and saw it requested broad GitHub OAuth permissions --essentially "full access to everything your account can do." When you authorize it, you're granting access to all your repositories.

This is partly driven by developer convenience on the agent side, but it's also driven by GitHub OAuth flow. It should be easier to create a downscoped approval during authorization that still allows the app to request additional access later. It should be easy to let an agent submit an authorization request scoped to a specific repository, etc.

Instead, I had to create a companion GitHub account (https://github.com/jmandel-via-jules) with explicit access only to the repositories and permissions I want Jules to touch. It's pretty inconvenient but I don't see another way to safely use these agents without potentially exposing everything.

GitHub does endorse creating "machine users" as dedicated accounts for applications, which validates this approach, but it shouldn't be necessary for basic repository scoping.

Please let me know if there is an easier way that Ip'm just missing.