Permission Denied Errors

You're trying to open a project, edit a document, or use a feature, and Obvious shows "Insufficient permissions" or a 403 error.

What's Happening

Obvious uses roles to control what each person can do. If your role doesn't include the capability you need, Obvious blocks the action. This isn't a bug — it's access control working as designed.

Check Your Role

Your current role determines what's available to you. Here's what each project role can do:

• Owner — Full control.
• Admin — Manage members and settings.
• Editor — Create and edit content.
• Viewer — View content and add comments.

If you're seeing a permission error, your role likely doesn't cover the action. For example, Viewers can't edit sheets, and Editors can't change project settings.

How to Request Access

1. Open the project and click Share in the top-right corner. Your current role appears next to your name.
2. Contact the project Owner or an Admin directly — they're listed in the Share panel under project members.
3. Ask them to upgrade your role to match what you need (e.g., Editor access to create artifacts).

If That Didn't Work

• Confirm the Owner hasn't restricted access via a link-based permission that overrides your role.
• If you were recently added, try signing out and back in — permission grants occasionally take a moment to propagate.

Related Articles

• Team Workspaces — How workspace and team roles work together.
• Teams — Creating teams and managing team-level access.