Grant models, plugins and tools
An account can use a model, a plugin or a tool only when its grant allows it, and the grant never widens what the installation offers.
How the checks stack
A model or tool must pass every applicable check before it runs: the installation offers it, the account's grant includes it, and the project, filesystem and permission rules allow the call.
A grant only narrows. It cannot add a model the installation cannot run, and it does not bypass project, filesystem or tool-permission checks.
Allow models
- Open Users and select the account.
- In Permissions, open Allowed models.
- Select the models the account may run, or turn on All models to allow every model the installation offers, including models added later.
- Save the selection.
With nothing selected and All models off, the account may use no model.
The grant covers the personal choices built on those models: the chat model, the vision fallback and the personal compaction model. If a granted compaction model is revoked later, summarization uses the permitted conversation model, and categorization uses that model only during the account's active turn and otherwise skips classification.
The first administrator starts with All models. Every human account created later, administrators included, starts with the preset chosen under Users → Options → Default settings for users → Preset for new accounts, or with no model access when no preset is chosen.
Grant plugins
Some plugins are user-grantable and stay unavailable to every account until you grant them in Granted plugins. Administrators can edit their own grants, but they cannot use an ungranted plugin either.
A grant makes the plugin's tools, its interface, its contributed skills and its gated requests eligible for that account. Prompt fragments, platform prompts, slash commands and the plugin's hooks are not gated by the grant.
Enable tools
The Tools list is a positive grant for built-in and plugin tools alike. An empty list grants no grantable tools, including for administrators; the very first administrator is seeded with the full grant at creation, and a new human account receives its preset's tool grants.
- Patterns such as
mcp__*cover a whole family, and a tool covered that way shows Allowed by pattern. - A tool whose plugin is not granted shows a not granted badge and cannot be switched on until you grant the plugin.
- A saved grant may stay while its plugin is disabled or a personal MCP server is offline. It matches no tool until that tool is available again, and unknown tool names have no effect.
Reply quotes, mentions and reactions within the conversation do not need a tool grant and do not appear in this list.
Host access and confinement
A terminal grant does not provide unrestricted host access. By default, commands from non-operators are confined to their available projects and their home directory, and an administrator lifts that with Confine non-operator commands in the Environments plugin settings.
File tools keep their own path boundaries, and commands in a managed project run inside that project's environment.
Check the result
Open the account and review Permissions, then use Sign in as on the account to see the interface with its own access.
Tip: A missing model or tool is nearly always a missing grant or a disabled plugin, not a broken installation.