What is Role-Based Access Control?
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) is a security model that assigns permissions to roles rather than individual entities, and then assigns roles to users, agents, or processes — simplifying permission management and enforcing organisational policies at scale.
WHY IT MATTERS
RBAC is the standard access control model in enterprise systems. Instead of defining permissions per agent ('Agent-47 can call read_file and write_file'), you define permissions per role ('Editor role can call read_file and write_file') and assign roles to agents.
This simplifies management at scale. When you have 50 agents, changing the editor's tool access means updating one role definition rather than 50 individual policies. New agents inherit appropriate tool permissions just by being assigned a role.
For MCP-based systems, RBAC maps naturally to grant policies. Each role gets its own policy document defining allowed tools and constraints. Agents are assigned to roles by attaching the corresponding policy to their grant in PolicyLayer.
HOW POLICYLAYER USES THIS
PolicyLayer implements RBAC through a separate policy document for each role. Define roles like 'reader' (read-only tools), 'editor' (read and write tools), or 'admin' (full tool access) — each built in the visual policy builder as a single JSON document. Assign agents to roles by attaching the corresponding policy to their grant on the server. Clean, scalable, and validated on every save.