Managing Access
Add users to workspaces, assign roles, and control who can access your resources. For background on the authorization model, refer to Authorization Concepts. For what each role can do, refer to Roles & Permissions.
The SDK examples on this page use NeMoPlatform() with no arguments so that the client reads your active CLI context (set by nemo auth login). That is the right pattern for authorization workflows: you act as your logged-in identity and pass the workspace explicitly in each API call. For the standard local initialization pattern, see CLI and SDK initialization.
Creating Workspaces
Workspaces are the primary authorization boundary — all resources belong to a workspace, and access is controlled at the workspace level. When you create a workspace, you automatically become its Admin.
Create separate workspaces to isolate teams (ml-research, nlp-team), environments (dev, staging, prod), or projects. For detailed workspace management, refer to Workspaces.
CLI
Python SDK
Managing Workspace Members
Members are users who have been granted access to a workspace. Each member has one of three roles:
- Viewer — Read-only access to all resources
- Editor — Can create, modify, and delete resources
- Admin — Full control, including managing members
Role Propagation
When you add or change a member, the CLI and SDK wait for the change to propagate to the authorization engine before returning (up to 30 seconds). The member can use their new permissions immediately after the command completes.
Add a Member
Grant someone access to a workspace by adding them as a member with a specific role. The principal is typically an email address that identifies the user in your identity provider.
CLI
Python SDK
List Members
View all members of a workspace to audit access or verify permissions. The response includes each member’s principal, roles, and when access was granted.
CLI
Python SDK
Update Member Roles
Change a member role to adjust their permissions, for example, promoting a Viewer to Editor when they need to create resources.
CLI
Python SDK
Remove a Member
Revoke a member’s access by removing them from the workspace. This removes all their role bindings in the workspace — they will no longer be able to access any resources unless re-added.
CLI
Python SDK
Granting Access to All Users
Use the wildcard principal * to grant a role to all authenticated users. This is useful for shared workspaces where you want broad access without adding each user individually.
Common use cases:
- Shared datasets — Grant Viewer to
*so everyone can use common training data - Team shared space — Grant Editor to
*for a workspace where anyone can experiment - Published models — Grant Viewer to
*for production models that everyone should access
Make a Workspace Readable by Everyone
Grant the Viewer role to * so all authenticated users can view resources.
CLI
Python SDK
Make a Workspace Editable by Everyone
Grant the Editor role to * so all authenticated users can create and modify resources.
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Python SDK
Remove Public Access
Remove the wildcard binding to restrict the workspace to explicit members only.
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Python SDK
Default Workspace Access
The platform automatically grants wildcard access to built-in workspaces:
defaultworkspace: All users have Editor accesssystemworkspace: All users have Viewer access (read-only)
This allows users to start working immediately without explicit role assignment.
Admin Protection
Every workspace must have at least one Admin to prevent orphaned workspaces. The platform enforces this rule:
- You cannot remove the last Admin from a workspace
- You cannot change the last Admin’s role to Viewer or Editor
If you need to leave a workspace where you are the only Admin, add another Admin first:
CLI
Python SDK
Platform Admin Access
The PlatformAdmin role (set using admin_email in config) has full access to all workspaces and bypasses authorization checks. PlatformAdmin is typically used for initial platform setup, creating the first workspaces and granting Admin roles to team leads. After bootstrap, day-to-day access management should use workspace-level members (above).
For details on configuring the platform admin, refer to Auth Configuration. For the full security implications, refer to Security Model.
Deleting Workspaces
Admins can delete workspaces they manage. However, a workspace cannot be deleted if it contains resources (projects, datasets, models, and so on). The API returns a 409 Conflict error listing which entity types exist:
Delete all resources in the workspace before deleting the workspace itself: