pulse/docs/RBAC.md

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

RBAC lets you define custom roles with granular permissions and assign them to users. This restricts what each user can see and do in Pulse.

Requires: Pro, legacy Pro+, Cloud, MSP, or Enterprise/custom license with the rbac capability.

For plan details, see PULSE_PRO.md. For API endpoints, see API Reference.

---

Concepts

Roles

A role is a named set of permissions. Each permission is an (action, resource) pair:

• action: read, write, delete, or admin
• resource: A Pulse resource type (e.g., alerts, settings, nodes, ai)

Pulse ships with built-in roles: admin (full access), operator (manage alerts and resources), viewer (read-only), and auditor (audit log access). You can create additional custom roles for more granular control.

Role Assignment

Users can hold multiple roles. Their effective permissions are combined across all assigned roles. Explicit deny rules take precedence over allow grants.

OIDC Group Mapping

When using OIDC/SSO, built-in roles can be automatically assigned based on group membership on every plan. See OIDC Group-to-Role Mapping for configuration. Creating custom roles and manually managing user assignments require Pro RBAC.

SSO authentication is not an administrator grant. An SSO-only deployment must map at least one trusted IdP group to the built-in admin role (or retain a configured local administrator) before operators can use instance-administration routes. Mapping a user to operator, viewer, or no role never elevates that user merely because no local administrator is configured.

---

Quick Start

1. Activate a Pro, grandfathered Pro+, Cloud, MSP, or Enterprise/custom license in Settings → Plans & Billing.
2. Go to Settings → Security → Access Control.
3. Create roles with the permissions you need.
4. Assign roles to users.

---

Managing Roles

Before Using the API

Prefer Settings → Security → Access Control for one-off administration. The API examples require the licensed rbac capability and permission to administer users. With RBAC enabled, role and user administration requires a full-access (*) API token bound to an authorised administrator; a monitoring token is not enough. Do not widen an agent's token for this job.

If you already use an administration token, prepare its private header file and define pulse_api in the same Bash session using API authentication. The helper is local example code, not an installed Pulse command. Never paste the token or a session cookie into a command, URL or report, or use browser Copy as cURL.

On the Pulse host, the helper uses loopback; for remote use, follow that guide's HTTPS-origin instructions and keep certificate verification enabled. It makes one request with a five-second connection limit and a twenty-second total limit, prints only the HTTP status and saves each response in a new owner-only file. Inspect the file privately, including on failure: role lists, user identities and errors can contain private information. Share only a relevant redacted excerpt, not full responses, header files or tokens. HTTP 401/402/403, redirects and transport errors are not an empty role or user list.

These are separate operations, not a script to run from top to bottom. Choose the intended target and change before making a request; preserve an existing administrator recovery path. Deleting a role or user and sending an empty role list remove access. After a change, check that target's saved roles and intended access through the normal UI or a separate read-only request. The helper does not follow redirects or retry. A timeout or partial response can occur after the change was applied; inspect the current state before deciding what to do, rather than repeating the mutation blindly. HTTP success alone does not establish the intended access or disable an upstream IdP account.

Creating a Role

UI: Settings → Security → Access Control → Create Role

Use a new custom role ID. Built-in roles (admin, operator, viewer, auditor) cannot be modified or deleted. These examples use alert-manager.

API:

pulse_api POST /api/admin/roles <<'JSON'
  {
    "id": "alert-manager",
    "name": "Alert Manager",
    "description": "Can view and manage alerts",
    "permissions": [
      {"action": "read", "resource": "alerts"},
      {"action": "write", "resource": "alerts"},
      {"action": "read", "resource": "nodes"}
    ]
  }
JSON

Listing Roles

pulse_api GET /api/admin/roles

Updating a Role

pulse_api PUT /api/admin/roles/alert-manager <<'JSON'
  {
    "name": "Alert Manager",
    "description": "Updated description",
    "permissions": [
      {"action": "read", "resource": "alerts"},
      {"action": "write", "resource": "alerts"},
      {"action": "read", "resource": "nodes"},
      {"action": "read", "resource": "ai"}
    ]
  }
JSON

Deleting a Role

pulse_api DELETE /api/admin/roles/alert-manager

---

Managing User Assignments

Listing Users and Their Roles

pulse_api GET /api/admin/users

SSO users are displayed using the latest configured username claim and email when available. The username field remains the provider-scoped stable principal used for authorization.

Setting Roles for a User

Role assignments are set as a complete list — the user's roles are replaced with the provided set:

Use the stable username returned by the user list, not the display name or email. URL-encode it as one path segment (for example, : becomes %3A for an SSO principal). jane below is an example local username. Create the custom role before assigning it; do not run the deletion example first.

pulse_api PUT /api/admin/users/jane/roles <<'JSON'
{"roleIds": ["alert-manager", "viewer"]}
JSON

To clear a user's entire role assignment, including built-in roles, send an empty list:

pulse_api PUT /api/admin/users/jane/roles <<'JSON'
{"roleIds": []}
JSON

Note: Users cannot modify their own role assignments (self-escalation prevention).

Removing User Access

pulse_api DELETE /api/admin/users/jane

This removes the Pulse identity and all role assignments and revokes its active sessions. You cannot remove your own current identity. Removal does not disable the upstream IdP account; a later authorized SSO login recreates the record.

---

Automatic Role Assignment via OIDC

If you use an OIDC identity provider, Pulse can automatically assign roles based on group membership on each login.

Mapping groups to the built-in admin, operator, and viewer roles is part of Community SSO. Creating custom roles and manually managing user assignments require Pro RBAC.

UI: Settings → Security → Single Sign-On → Group Role Mappings

Environment variable (legacy env-configured OIDC provider only — it does not apply to providers created through the UI or the SSO provider API):

# Format: group1=role1,group2=role2
OIDC_GROUP_ROLE_MAPPINGS="oidc-admins=admin,oidc-operators=operator,oidc-viewers=viewer"

How it works:

• On each login, Pulse reads the user's groups from the OIDC groups claim.
• Matching groups are mapped to Pulse roles.
• A user can receive multiple roles from multiple group mappings.
• Once a provider has any group role mappings configured, the mapping is authoritative: on every login the user's role assignments are replaced with whatever the mapping resolves to. A login that matches no mapped group resolves to an empty set, which clears the user's existing role assignments. Watch for identity providers that silently drop the groups claim (see the Entra ID group overage warning in OIDC.md) — to Pulse that looks the same as losing every group.
• Role changes are logged to the audit log as oidc_role_assignment events.

See OIDC documentation for full configuration details.

---

Organization Roles (Enterprise/Internal Multi-Org)

In Enterprise/internal multi-organization deployments, each organization has its own role hierarchy:

Role	Permissions
Owner	Full control. Can transfer ownership and delete the org.
Admin	Manage members, shares, and org settings. Cannot transfer ownership.
Editor	Read/write access to org resources. Cannot manage members.
Viewer	Read-only access to all org data.

These organization roles are separate from the RBAC custom roles described above. Organization roles control access within a specific internal organization, while RBAC roles control access to Pulse features globally.

Provider-hosted MSP uses a different boundary: each client workspace is its own isolated Pulse runtime. RBAC inside that runtime controls access for that client, and the provider control plane handles account-level staff access and handoff.

See Multi-Tenant Organizations for details.

---

Example: Team Setup

A typical team configuration:

User	Role	Access
alice	admin	Full access to everything
bob	operator	Can view nodes/VMs and manage alerts
carol	viewer	Read-only access to monitoring views and metrics
monitoring-bot	API token with monitoring:read scope	Automated alert polling

---

Related Documentation

• Plans and Entitlements — RBAC availability by plan
• OIDC / SSO — Automatic role assignment from identity providers
• Audit Logging — Track role changes and access events
• Multi-Tenant Organizations — Organization-level roles
• API Reference — RBAC API endpoints
• Security Policy — Core security model