Granular Cryptographic Compartmentalization of Contextual Metadata

This article surveys the integration of autonomous AI agents with IoT and edge computing across industries (healthcare, retail, manufacturing, smart buildings), addressing orchestration of multi-agent systems, identity and access management (mTLS, service accounts, zero trust), operational guardrails (immutable logs, human override, thresholds), and recommendations for scaling and future-proofing; it is advisory in nature and does not describe any specific security incident or active exploitation.