Access Control

Sortie provides per-application visibility controls with category-scoped access grants. This lets administrators restrict which users can see and launch specific applications.

Overview

Access control is built on two concepts:

1. App visibility -- each application has a visibility level (public, approved, or admin_only)
2. Category access grants -- users are granted access at the category level (as a category admin or approved user), which applies to all matching apps in that category

Visibility Levels

Level	Who can see the app
public	All authenticated users
approved	Category admins + approved users for the app's category
admin_only	Category admins for the app's category only

System administrators (users with the admin role) bypass visibility filtering and can always see all applications.

Setting Visibility

Set the visibility field when creating or updating an application:

curl -X POST /api/apps \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -d '{
    "id": "internal-tool",
    "name": "Internal Tool",
    "category": "Engineering",
    "launch_type": "url",
    "url": "https://internal.example.com",
    "visibility": "approved"
  }'

If omitted, visibility defaults to public.

Category Access Grants

Access grants are scoped per-category. When a user is granted access to a category, they can see all apps in that category that match their access level.

Category Admins

Category admins can see admin_only and approved apps in their category. They can also:

• Create, update, and delete apps within their category
• Add and remove other category admins
• Add and remove approved users

Add a category admin:

curl -X POST /api/categories/cat-engineering/admins \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -d '{"user_id": "user-uuid"}'

Approved Users

Approved users can see approved apps in the category they are approved for. They cannot manage apps or other users.

Add an approved user:

curl -X POST /api/categories/cat-engineering/approved-users \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  -d '{"user_id": "user-uuid"}'

Mixed Visibility

A single category can contain apps with different visibility levels. For example, an "Engineering" category might have:

App	Visibility	Visible to
Public Docs	public	Everyone
CI Dashboard	approved	Category admins + approved users
Secrets Manager	admin_only	Category admins only

A regular user would see only "Public Docs". An approved user would see "Public Docs" and "CI Dashboard". A category admin would see all three.

Managing Access in the UI

Administrators can manage category access from the Categories tab in the Admin panel:

1. Navigate to Admin > Categories
2. Click Manage on the target category
3. Use the modal to add or remove category admins and approved users
4. Click Done when finished

App visibility is set per-app in the Applications tab via the Visibility dropdown in the app create/edit form.

How Categories Are Created

Categories can be created explicitly via the Admin panel or API. They are also auto-created when an app references a category name that does not yet exist.