Roles and permissions
Last updated: October 19, 2026
A role decides what someone can do in a workspace: generate, train reference sets, run workflows, invite people or change billing. Every member and service account holds one, so choosing it well is how you give people the access their job needs and nothing more.
How it works
A role is a named set of permissions. Each member holds one role in each workspace they belong to, and you choose it when you invite them or later from their row on the Members page. A change takes effect straight away, the next time they act.
On Enterprise, a member can also belong to groups, and each group can carry a role of its own. The member can then do everything their own role allows plus everything their groups' roles allow. Members whose role comes from a group show Group managed on the Members page.
To see exactly what a role grants, click your workspace name in the sidebar, choose Settings, and under People select Roles. Select a role's name to open its permissions. Roles that can hand over the workspace, its members, its billing or its sign-in carry an Admin access badge. The Roles page lists roles on the Enterprise plan; on other plans, the two built-in roles below are the whole list.
Built-in roles
Admin
Runs the workspace. An Admin has every permission: they manage members, roles and groups, billing and usage limits, sign-in (SSO and SCIM), workspace settings and AI controls, publish through connected integrations and storefronts, and can delete the workspace. They can also do all the creative work a Creator does.
Creator
Does the creative work. A Creator generates, edits, trains reference sets, builds and runs workflows, writes agent skills, organizes the library and manages projects, and can see the workspace's Creative Unit balance. A Creator cannot change who is in the workspace, what anyone may do, billing, sign-in or workspace settings, and cannot publish to a connected integration or storefront. New invitations start on Creator.
Custom roles
On the Enterprise plan you can build roles of your own from any set of permissions, such as an outsourcing partner who can generate but not train, or a reviewer who can see work without spending Creative Units. See Create a custom role.
A custom role made in a parent workspace can be given in every workspace below it. Artist, Art Director, Editor and Settings Admin are not built-in roles; Enterprise workspaces that use them hold them as custom roles of the same name, with the same permissions, and can edit them like any other custom role.
Permissions
Every permission a role can grant, as it appears when you create or open a role, and which built-in roles hold it.
Workspace, members and billing
Permission | What it allows | Admin | Creator |
|---|---|---|---|
Access workspace | Sign in to the workspace and see its shared surfaces. Every role has it. | ✓ | ✓ |
Manage workspace settings | Change workspace settings and reach every project without being a member of it. | ✓ | |
Delete workspace | Permanently delete the workspace and everything in it. | ✓ | |
Export events | Download the workspace's audit and activity events. | ✓ | |
Manage members | Invite, suspend and remove members, and see their activity. | ✓ | |
Change member roles | Give roles to members and groups. | ✓ | |
Manage roles | Create, edit and archive custom roles. | ✓ | |
Manage SCIM provisioning | Set up the identity provider that adds members and groups. | ✓ | |
Manage billing | Buy Creative Units, change the plan, and manage payment methods and usage limits. | ✓ | |
View billing | See the workspace's Creative Unit balance and usage. | ✓ | ✓ |
Labels, library and sessions
Permission | What it allows | Admin | Creator |
|---|---|---|---|
Manage labels | Rename, recolour and delete the workspace's labels. | ✓ | |
Create labels | Add new labels to the workspace. | ✓ | ✓ |
Assign labels | Put existing labels on assets, sessions and projects. | ✓ | ✓ |
View assets | Browse and download the workspace's assets. | ✓ | ✓ |
Edit assets | Upload, rename, edit and delete assets. | ✓ | ✓ |
Create folders | Add folders to organize the library. | ✓ | ✓ |
Edit folders | Rename and move folders. | ✓ | ✓ |
Delete folders | Remove folders from the library. | ✓ | ✓ |
View sessions | Open sessions and see their history. | ✓ | ✓ |
Edit sessions | Create, rename and delete sessions and work inside them. | ✓ | ✓ |
Manage session templates | Create and edit the templates new sessions start from. | ✓ | ✓ |
Projects, styles and generation
Permission | What it allows | Admin | Creator |
|---|---|---|---|
View projects | See the projects the member belongs to. | ✓ | ✓ |
Edit projects | Create projects, rename them and manage their members. | ✓ | ✓ |
Delete projects | Delete projects and everything filed under them. | ✓ | ✓ |
Edit content policy | Write a project's input guardrails and output scoring rules. | ✓ | ✓ |
View styles | Browse the workspace's trained styles and use them in generations. | ✓ | ✓ |
Edit styles | Rename, retag and delete styles. | ✓ | ✓ |
Train reference sets | Start reference set training runs, which spend Creative Units. | ✓ | ✓ |
Import styles | Bring externally trained styles into the workspace. | ✓ | ✓ |
Export styles | Share styles out of the workspace. | ✓ | ✓ |
Download style weights | Download the trained model files themselves. | ✓ | ✓ |
Edit reference sets | Create and edit the reference sets a training run learns from. | ✓ | ✓ |
Generate | Run generations, which spend Creative Units. | ✓ | ✓ |
Use realtime generation | Use the realtime canvas and draw-to-image surfaces. | ✓ | ✓ |
View generation history | See what everyone in the workspace has generated. | ✓ | ✓ |
Delete generations | Remove generations from the history. | ✓ | ✓ |
Workflows, skills and integrations
Permission | What it allows | Admin | Creator |
|---|---|---|---|
View workflows | Open workflows and see how they are wired. | ✓ | ✓ |
Run workflows | Run workflows, which spend Creative Units. | ✓ | ✓ |
Edit workflows | Build and change workflows. | ✓ | ✓ |
Import workflows | Bring workflows in from outside the workspace. | ✓ | ✓ |
Export workflows | Share workflows out of the workspace. | ✓ | ✓ |
Delete workflows | Remove workflows from the workspace. | ✓ | ✓ |
View skills | See the workspace's agent skills and use them in chat. | ✓ | ✓ |
Edit skills | Create, change and delete agent skills. | ✓ | ✓ |
Publish to integrations | Push assets out through a connected integration, such as paused ads to a connected ad account. | ✓ | |
Publish to storefront | Put content live on a connected store, where shoppers see it. | ✓ |
What it means for you
Start people on Creator. It covers every creative job. Make someone an Admin only when they need to run the workspace itself.
Keep two Admins. The only Admin cannot change their own role, so promote a second person before anyone goes on leave or moves team.
Publishing out of Layer is an Admin job by default. Pushing ads to a connected ad account or content to a storefront needs Publish to integrations or Publish to storefront. On Enterprise, a custom role can add them to a Creator's permissions for the people who ship.
Spending is separate from seeing. Generate, Use realtime generation, Train reference sets and Run workflows spend Creative Units. To cap what a team spends rather than what it can do, set a usage limit. See Creative Units.
Service accounts hold roles too. Give a pipeline the smallest role that covers what it does. See Set up a service account for the API.