User Roles and Permissions

Pinchy uses two roles — Admin and Member — to control access to platform features. Every user has exactly one role.

Roles

Admin

Admins have full control over the Pinchy platform. They can manage users, configure providers, create and modify agents, and view the audit trail.

The first user account created during initial setup is automatically an admin. Additional admins can be created by inviting users with the Admin role.

Member

Members can chat with agents they have access to, manage their own profile and personal context, and use their personal Smithers agent. They cannot change platform-wide settings or manage other users.

How roles are assigned

• First user: The setup wizard creates the first account as an admin. There is no way to complete setup without creating an admin.
• Invited users: When an admin invites a new user (via Settings → Users), they choose the role — either Admin or Member. The invited user receives that role when they claim their invite and create their account.
• Role changes: Admins can change any user’s role after creation via Settings → Users. Pinchy prevents demoting the last remaining admin to ensure there is always at least one.

Permission matrix

Action	Admin	Member
Chat with accessible agents	Yes	Yes
Edit personal context	Yes	Yes
Edit profile (name, password)	Yes	Yes
Use personal Smithers agent	Yes	Yes
Create shared agents	Yes	No
Edit / delete shared agents	Yes	No
Configure agent permissions (tools)	Yes	No
Configure agent visibility and groups	Yes	No
Manage LLM provider keys	Yes	No
Edit organization context	Yes	No
Invite and manage users	Yes	No
Change user roles	Yes	No
Create and manage groups	Yes	No
View and export audit trail	Yes	No
Manage enterprise license key	Yes	No

Agent visibility and roles

Roles interact with agent visibility to determine which agents a user can see in the sidebar.

• Admins see all agents — shared agents of any visibility, plus every user’s personal agents.
• Members see:
  • Their own personal Smithers agent
  • Shared agents with visibility set to All users
  • Shared agents with Restricted visibility, if they belong to an assigned group (enterprise feature)

Members cannot see other users’ personal agents or restricted agents they are not grouped into.

Only admins can change an agent’s visibility setting or assign groups to it. For details on visibility modes, see Agent Permissions.

Settings access

The Settings page shows different tabs depending on the user’s role:

Settings tab	Admin	Member
Context	Yes	Yes
Profile	Yes	Yes
Provider	Yes	No
Users	Yes	No
Groups	Yes	No
License	Yes	No

Members see only the Context and Profile tabs. Admin-only tabs are completely hidden — not just disabled.

Groups for granular access

Roles provide platform-wide access control. For more granular, per-agent access control, use Groups to scope agent visibility to specific teams. Groups are an enterprise feature — activate them with a license key.