OAuth is additive

Signing in with X unlocks personal features. It is never required for Free, BYOK, or the agent API.

Xintel treats X (OAuth) sign-in as strictly additive. It grants extra capabilities to a signed-in user; it never gates Free mode, BYOK, or agent access.

What OAuth unlocks

Connecting an X account enables features that need a user-context token:

• Your own accounts in the You tab — profile, feed, bookmarks, and likes
• Publishing from Post
• Authenticated gathers, which return richer fields than public lookups

Multiple X accounts can be connected; disconnecting one keeps its encrypted local cache.

What it never blocks

None of the following require an X connection:

Action	Path
Gather any public handle	Others tab
Venice inference on the Free tier or your own key	BYOK
List handles with shared reports	GET /api/intel/list
Read a report menu or buy report bodies	GET /api/intel/reports

If the interface appears to require an X connection before basic Free or BYOK work, that is a bug, not intended behavior.

Agents

The agent API never uses OAuth. Its only gate is x402 payment, and only on paid select requests. See Auth and payment.