Disclosed herein are methods and systems for token-based application management. In an embodiment, requests are received from applications for tokens that can be active or inactive. A token-interaction-directive pool is maintained in data storage, each directive having a triggering token, a target token, and one or both of triggering-token actions and target-token actions. Responsive to receiving a token request from an application, any directives having their triggering token equal the requested token and having their target token active are identified. A response plan that includes the actions in the identified directives is generated. Any triggering-token actions in the response plan are communicated to the requesting application, and any target-token actions in the response plan are communicated to each application that is authorized to access the corresponding target token.