Dosu uses role-based access control to decide who can change what in your organization. This page explains the three roles, what each one can do, and how roles map to creating Agents, creating Libraries, and setting Library visibility.

What it is#

Every member of a Dosu organization has one role. The role controls which actions that person can take across the dashboard, from inviting teammates to creating Agents and Libraries to changing billing. Dosu has three roles:

• Owner: full control over the organization, including the ability to delete it. Each organization has exactly one Owner, which is the person who created it.
• Admin: can manage members and invitations, change organization settings, create and modify Agents and Libraries, view billing, and manage the subscription.
• Member: can sign in and view the organization, including Agents and billing information, but cannot create or modify them.

People who interact with Dosu only through an Agent on GitHub or Slack do not need a Dosu account or a role. Roles apply to dashboard users only.

Why it matters#

As an engineering organization grows past a single repo, you need a shared source of truth without giving everyone the keys to it. RBAC lets a platform or admin group own the configuration (which Sources are connected, how Agents respond, which Libraries are public) while the wider team reads, asks, and reviews. That keeps governance in the hands of a small group and reduces the risk of a Library going public when it should remain private.

How to configure#

Roles are assigned and changed in Settings > Organization > Members. From there, an Owner or Admin can:

1. Invite a new member by email. New invitations default to the Member role, and you can choose a different role when you invite.
2. Change an existing member's role between Owner, Admin, and Member.
3. Remove a member or cancel a pending invitation.

To transfer ownership to a different person, contact the Dosu team. Ownership cannot be reassigned from the dashboard.

Roles and permissions#

The table below summarizes what each role can do. Where a row says Owner and Admin, Members have view-only access to that area.

Details worth calling out#

• Agents and Libraries are Owner- and Admin-only. Members can view both but cannot create, edit, or delete them. A Member assigned as a Library Admin can manage that Library's Sources and members (see Library roles below). A Member assigned as an Agent Admin can update that Agent, including its Slack notification channel.
• Library visibility is an Owner and Admin action. Setting a Library to public exposes its Documents and connected Sources to anyone, including people without a Dosu account, so this is restricted to Owners and Admins. Internal visibility makes a Library readable by all organization members, who inherit access from their organization role, while keeping it within the organization boundary. See Public Libraries before you make a Library public.
• Only Owners and Admins manage other members. They can change or remove Members and Admins, but cannot remove or demote the Owner. That is why ownership transfer goes through the Dosu team.

Library roles#

Each Library also has its own roles, Library Admin and Library Member. Library Admins manage the Library's Sources, style guidelines, members, and Slack notification channel. Renaming a Library, changing its visibility, and deleting it stay with organization Owners and Admins.

In internal and public Libraries, everyone in the organization inherits a Library role from their organization role, with no assignment needed:

• Organization Owners and Admins are Library Admins in every internal and public Library.
• Organization Members are Library Members in every internal and public Library.

Inherited access follows organization membership. People who join the organization get access right away, and people who leave lose it.

To give an organization Member more control over one Library, assign them as a Library Admin from the Library's Admins tab. When someone has both an assigned role and an inherited role, the stronger role applies. Organization Owners and Admins cannot be demoted to Library Member in an internal or public Library. To change their access, change their organization role in Settings > Organization > Members.

Private Libraries do not inherit organization roles. Only people with an assigned Library role can open a private Library, and that includes organization Owners and Admins. Library Admins assign those roles from the Library's Members tab. When you make an internal or public Library private, you keep access as a Library Admin. Everyone else without an assigned Library role, including other organization Admins, loses access.

Notes#

• Seats and roles. Every person in the organization counts as one seat, regardless of role. Owner, Admin, and Member seats are all billed the same way. People who ask Dosu through GitHub or Slack do not consume a seat. For how seats and plans work, see Billing and the pricing page.
• Source access is org-wide, not per-role. Once a Source, such as a Slack workspace, is connected to a Library, its content becomes available to everyone in the organization who can access that Library. Roles govern who can connect and configure Sources, not which connected content a Member can read. To narrow what Dosu indexes, scope the connection at the Source itself.
• Single sign-on. If your organization uses SSO, sign-in is handled by your identity provider while the role assigned here still determines what each person can do. See Single Sign-On.

Related#

• User Management
• Single Sign-On
• Settings Overview
• Billing