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How to Define User Roles Before Building an AI App

By SayCraft Team · 2026-08-12 · 9 min read

Define user roles by naming each real user type, its goal, allowed actions, blocked actions, data scope, and handoffs. Do this before generating screens. A role map keeps the first workflow bounded and gives the team something concrete to review, but it is not an authorization implementation or proof of security.

Copyable role and permission matrix

Replace the example with your real workflow. If two roles have the same goal, actions, and scope, combine them for the first version. If a role exists only for a future enterprise idea, leave it out until a current workflow needs it.

Five steps to define app roles

1. Start from jobs, not titles. “Reviewer who approves one draft” is clearer than “stakeholder.”
2. Name the resource. Specify which workspace, project, record, file, or setting the action affects.
3. Write both allowed and blocked actions. “Can comment” does not answer whether the person can edit, delete, export, or invite.
4. Map handoffs. Record who creates, reviews, approves, and recovers a failed workflow.
5. Test complete scenarios. Include another workspace, a removed member, an expired invitation, and a direct URL to a blocked resource.

Role design is not authorization

NIST describes role-based access control as assigning permissions through organizational roles. That is a useful model, not a requirement that every product use only RBAC. A real policy may also depend on attributes or relationships such as workspace membership, record ownership, region, or approval state.

OWASP recommends least privilege, deny by default, and validating permission on every request. A hidden button is therefore not an access-control boundary. The server must make the authorization decision for the requested resource and action, and the team should test both allowed and denied cases.

Add data ownership and tenant separation

A role says what a user type may do; tenant separation says which organization's records the request may touch. Add these fields to the matrix for every important resource:

• Tenant owner: which workspace or organization owns the record?
• Actor relationship: how is the signed-in person related to that tenant and resource?
• Allowed scope: may the role access all tenant records or only assigned ones?
• Transfer and deletion: who can move, export, retain, or delete the data?
• Cross-tenant test: what happens when a valid user supplies another tenant's URL or identifier?

Do not rely on a tenant ID sent by the browser as proof of ownership. Resolve the actor, relationship, resource, and permitted action at the server boundary. A role map makes the intended policy visible; implementation and isolation tests prove whether the product enforces it.

Turn the matrix into a focused preview

Use one end-to-end workflow: for example, an owner invites a reviewer, the reviewer sees one project, comments, and submits a decision. Build the normal path plus empty, expired, forbidden, and recovery states. SayCraft can turn that bounded conversation into a live preview; the preview helps people review scope and interaction, while production identity, authorization, data isolation, and audit requirements remain separate engineering work.

Next, express the workflow with the user flow template and write testable behavior in the SRS template.

Sources

• NIST: Role-Based Access Control
• OWASP Authorization Cheat Sheet