How to give your team AI access without giving away admin

The first person to connect a store to an AI assistant is usually the owner. Within a week, someone else asks: "Can I use that too?" The packer wants to see what's ready to ship. The person answering emails wants to look up orders. The marketer wants to create coupons and check how the last promotion went.

The tempting answer is to share the owner's access. That's the AI version of sharing the admin password, and it has the same problems: everyone can do everything, and nobody can tell who did what.

This guide shows a better way: teams with exact, per-tool permissions, so each person's assistant can do their job and nothing else.

Why shared access is a problem

When everyone uses one all-powerful connection:

• Mistakes have a large blast radius. A packer's misunderstood request could reach refunds or settings.
• There's no accountability. The activity log says the owner did it, because everyone is the owner.
• Offboarding is painful. When someone leaves, you have to revoke and reconnect everything.
• It fails the "need to know" test. Your seasonal helper probably shouldn't see your revenue reports.

WordPress already solves this for its admin with roles: Administrator, Editor, Shop Manager, Customer. Your AI access deserves the same care.

How team access works

In AI Plugin Generator, every plugin has a Team section. It works in three layers:

1. The plugin's tools. The full set of tools you built into the plugin. Nobody can go beyond these.
2. Teams. Groups you name, such as Packers, Support or Marketing. Each team is one of three kinds (admin, staff or customer) and has its own tool checklist, ticked from the plugin's tools.
3. People. Each person belongs to a team and gets that team's tools by default. You can narrow the list for an individual, for example a new starter who should only see part of what their team can do. A person's list can never go beyond their team's.

Access is checked on every single call. If a packer's assistant tries to call "create refund" and Packers don't have it, the call is refused as if the tool didn't exist.

Designing your teams

Start from jobs, not people. Here are teams that work well for a typical store.

Packers and fulfilment

They need to know what to ship and to mark it shipped.

• List orders (read)
• Get order (read)
• List order notes (read)
• Update order status (write): for marking orders completed
• Add order note (write): for tracking numbers

Not included: refunds, customers' full history, reports, coupons, products.

Customer support

They answer "where's my order?" and fix small problems.

• List and get orders (read)
• Get customer, customer orders (read)
• List order notes (read)
• Add order note (write)
• Update customer address (write)

Refunds can stay with owners. If one senior support person needs them, put them in a small "Senior support" team that includes "create refund". Every refund still comes back as a preview that needs confirming.

Marketing

They run promotions and need numbers to judge them.

• List products, top products, top categories (read)
• Sales summary, revenue stats (read)
• List coupons, coupon performance (read)
• Create and update coupon (write)
• Create post as draft (write): for announcements

Not included: orders' personal details, refunds, settings.

Stock and catalogue

They keep products accurate.

• List products, variations, stock report (read)
• Update stock, update price (write)
• Update product (write)
• Bulk update products (write): bulk changes always preview every product first

Owners

Owners keep the full plugin, including settings, refunds and deletions, ideally still with previews and the activity log.

Setting it up

1. Open your plugin and go to Team in the sidebar.
2. Create your teams. Give each a clear name and choose its tools with checkboxes. There's a select-all for read and write tools if a team needs everything in a group.
3. Add people to each team by name and email.
4. For anyone who should have less than their team, open their entry and untick the tools they don't need.
5. Give each person their own connection code from the dashboard. They use it to sign in from their own AI app and work within their tools.

Changes take effect on the next call. If someone moves from Packers to Support, update their team and their access follows.

Visibility built in

The Activity tab records every call: the tool, the AI app that made it, what it touched and the outcome. Combined with narrow team access, you know which group could have made a given change. A packer's access can't produce a refund, because Packers don't have the refund tool.

It also gives you a feedback loop. If people keep asking for something their team can't do, maybe that team needs the tool, or maybe it needs a quick word about process.

Offboarding in one step

When someone leaves, remove them from their team. Their access stops on their next request. You don't need to rotate store keys or reconnect anyone else's AI app.

Customers as a team

Teams aren't only for staff. If you publish a customer-facing app, customers can be a team too, with a very small, read-only tool set: product search, stock and similar. For directory listings, see publishing your app in the ChatGPT directory.

Principles to keep

• Least access by default. Start with fewer tools; add when someone hits a real need.
• Writes are earned. Give write tools to the team that does that job every day.
• High-impact tools stay narrow. Refunds, deletions and settings belong to owners or named individuals.
• Review quarterly. Teams drift. A ten-minute review of who has what keeps it tidy.

For the wider safety picture, read Is it safe to give AI access to your store?