Roles & permissions

Access is governed by roles. Each user carries one or more roles (permissions union — see Multiple roles per user); a role grants access to tables, columns, rows and actions. Roles are authoritative in config/auth.hcl — versioned config you review like code. The in-app roles screen edits that same file: creates, edits and deletes write config/auth.hcl atomically and hot-swap the live config (on a read-only bundle it hands you the HCL to commit yourself).

How a permission is decided

1. Each role's coarse tables level sets a baseline (read / write / none).
2. The role's perm "<table>" block refines it per capability (view / create / update / delete).
3. With several roles, capabilities OR together — privileges add up, restrictions need unanimity.
4. The result is ANDed with the table config's permissions { } ceiling (writes only).
5. A view or PK-less table is structurally read-only — no role, admin included, can write it.
6. Masking, row filters and editable then narrow what an allowed request can touch.

Public access (no login)

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# config/auth.hcl
public_role = "viewer"

With public_role set, anonymous visitors act as that role without logging in — kiosk dashboards, read-only status panels, hosted demos. It accepts a comma-separated list of roles, exactly like a user's assignment. A real session always wins over the anonymous identity, log in normally to switch. Naming an unknown role is a load error. Point it at a write-capable role only if you truly mean it: everyone on the network gets that power.

The admin role

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admin is built in. It has full access to everything and cannot be edited or deleted. It bypasses the role-side refinements below (levels, perm, editable, role masking, row filters) — but not the table itself: a table config's permissions { } ceiling and structural read-only-ness (a view or a PK-less table) bind admins too, and so do automatic and field-level column masking.

config/auth.hcl

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Every role is a role "<name>" { } block:

role "staff" {
  tables = {
    "*"          = "read"
    "orders"     = "write"
    "products"   = "write"
    "customers"  = "write"
  }

  actions = [
    "orders.mark_shipped",
    "orders.refund",
    "products.activate",
    "products.deactivate",
  ]

  masked = {
    "subscriptions" = ["api_token"]
  }
}

Key	Type	Description
extends	string	Parent role to inherit from — see Role inheritance.
customize	bool	May open Personalizar and edit table configs (visual + raw HCL + version history). Config authorship — grant to trusted power users only; groups, dashboard, discover and access screens stay admin-only. Inherits through extends and unions across multiple roles.
tables	map	The coarse access level per table: "read" or "write". "*" sets a default for every table.
perm "<table>" { }	block	Fine-grained per-capability override (view/create/update/delete).
editable	map	Per-table whitelist of columns this role may edit.
actions	list	Bulk actions this role may invoke, as "<table>.<action>".
masked	map	Per-table columns whose values are hidden from this role.
row_filter	map	Per-table SQL predicate scoping which rows this role sees.

role "power_user" {
  tables    = { "*" = "read" }
  customize = true   # may open Personalizar and edit table configs
}

Role inheritance

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A role can extend another with extends — the parent resolves first, then the child's own entries override it key by key:

role "viewer" {
  tables = { "*" = "read" }
}

role "support" {
  extends = "viewer"
  tables  = { "orders" = "write" }   # everything else stays read from viewer
}

• tables, perm, editable, masked and row_filter merge per key: a child entry for a table replaces the parent's entry for that table wholesale.
• actions is the union of parent and child.
• Chains are allowed (a → b → c). An extends naming an unknown role or forming a cycle is a startup/config error, and the runtime editors reject it with a 400 — a broken hierarchy never loads silently.
• The runtime Roles editor exposes this as the Inherits from selector, plus a show effective permissions toggle that renders the fully-resolved matrix (parents flattened in) read-only — what the role actually grants, not just its own overrides.

Multiple roles per user

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A user may carry several roles (comma-separated in the Users editor — chips in the UI). Permissions are the union, Django-groups style:

• Privileges add up: table levels take the highest (read + write = write), granular perm capabilities OR together, actions union.
• Restrictions hold only when every relevant role imposes them: a column stays masked only if masked in ALL view-granting roles for that table; row_filters OR together (a view-granting role with no filter lifts the restriction entirely); an editable whitelist applies only if every write-granting role has one (then the union of the lists).
• admin anywhere in the list makes the user an admin.

A broad role lifts restrictions

Because restrictions need unanimity, adding a generic role (e.g. a viewer with "*" = "read" and no masks/filters) to a user whose other role masked columns or filtered rows unmasks and unfilters everything that role can see. Keep broad roles narrow, or give them the same masks.

Coarse table access

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tables is the baseline. Two levels:

• "read" — the role may view the table but not change it.
• "write" — the role may view, create, update and delete.

The "*" wildcard sets a default for all tables; per-table entries override it:

tables = {
  "*"      = "read"      # read everything by default
  "orders" = "write"     # …but fully manage orders
}

Granular capabilities (perm)

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A perm "<table>" block refines the coarse level one capability at a time. Each of view, create, update, delete is optional: unset defers to the coarse tables level; set forces that value.

role "support" {
  tables = { orders = "write" }

  perm "orders" {
    view   = true
    update = true
    create = false      # can edit rows, but not add or remove them
    delete = false
  }
}

Every write capability is then intersected with the table's own permissions { } ceiling and the structural read-only gate:

update = (perm.update ?? coarse) AND ceiling.write                     AND not read-only
create = (perm.create ?? coarse) AND ceiling.write AND ceiling.create AND not read-only
delete = (perm.delete ?? coarse) AND ceiling.write AND ceiling.delete AND not read-only
view   = (perm.view   ?? coarse)          # reads have no ceiling

So create = true on a role means nothing if the table config sets permissions { create = false } (or write = false) — the ceiling wins.

Editable-column whitelist

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editable restricts which columns a role can write, table by table. When a table has an editable list, any column not in it is rejected on every write path (update, create, bulk, import) — on top of the usual masked / readonly / PK / computed rejections. Absent means no per-column restriction.

role "support" {
  tables   = { orders = "write" }
  editable = { orders = ["status", "total"] }   # may only change these two columns
}

This is orthogonal to masked: a column can be readable-but-not-editable, or editable-but-masked-in-display, independently.

Column masking

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masked lists columns whose values this role should not see. Masked values come back pre-masked (never the real value), are excluded from search and export, and cannot be used as a sort key.

masked = {
  "subscriptions" = ["api_token"]
}

Independent of roles, secret-shaped column names auto-mask for everyone (admins included), and a field-level masked = true binds admins too — see Security → Column masking.

Row-level filters

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row_filter scopes a role to a subset of rows via a SQL predicate that is ANDed into every query touching that table — list, count, search, and writes. A user can never see or touch a row outside their filter.

role "support" {
  tables     = { "*" = "read" }
  row_filter = {
    "customers" = "t.active AND t.plan <> 'free'"
  }
}

The current row is aliased t. The token {actor.email} is substituted with the signed-in user's email as a complete quoted, escaped SQL string literal — write it without surrounding quotes:

row_filter = {
  "orders" = "t.customer_id IN (SELECT id FROM customers WHERE email = {actor.email})"
}

Actions

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actions lists which bulk actions the role can invoke, each as "<table>.<action>" matching an action "…" block in that table's config. A role can only run actions listed here.

actions = ["orders.mark_shipped", "orders.refund", "products.deactivate"]

Managing roles & users at runtime

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Admins can manage roles and users from the in-app access screens. Role edits write config/auth.hcl (atomically, versioned, hot-swapped); users live in cartapel's SQLite state. Guardrails:

• The builtin admin role cannot be edited or deleted — and a new role named any casing of it (Admin, ADMIN) is rejected. Role names are 1–64 chars of letters, digits, _ or -.
• A role still assigned to users cannot be deleted — reassign them first.
• A role other roles extends cannot be deleted — remove the inheritance first.
• You cannot delete or demote the last admin user.
• Role definitions are validated against the live schema — every referenced table, action and editable column must exist (and be configured in the admin; a role cannot reference a table cartapel doesn't expose).
• A user assigned a role name that no longer exists simply gets nothing from it — stale assignments fail closed, never error.
• On a read-only config bundle, role edits change nothing — the screen returns the would-be HCL for you to commit.

Users can also be provisioned offline with cartapel user add.

View as a role

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An admin can impersonate any other defined role to verify exactly what it sees — pick "View as" from the user menu. While impersonating:

• Every request is evaluated with the impersonated role's permissions, masking and row filters.
• The session is read-only: any mutation is rejected with a 403 until you exit.
• It never escalates — only admins are honored, and viewing as admin is a no-op.

A banner shows the active role the whole time; exit via the banner or the user menu.