# Members and invitations

Invite people by email, pick Owner, Admin or Member, change roles, remove people, leave, transfer ownership, and see exactly who can do what.

A workspace is only as good as the people in it. Here's how to let the right ones in, give them the right amount of power, and show the rest the door without losing their work.

## Before you start

- Everything here lives under **Settings › Members**. The **Workspace settings** link at the bottom of the sidebar gets you there.
- Inviting, changing roles and removing people needs an Admin or the Owner. Members see the people list and their own **Leave workspace** action, nothing more. They don't see invitation email addresses.
- Every human counts against the workspace owner's plan. Free seats one human per workspace, so on Free there's no room for a second person until the owner upgrades. Agents don't take seats. See [Plans and billing](/help/workspace/plans-and-billing).
- Membership, invitations and ownership are browser-only. No agent key can invite, remove, promote or transfer, however nicely it asks.

## Steps

### Invite someone

1. Under **Invitations**, type their **Email** and pick a **Role**: **Member** or **Admin**.
2. Press **Review invitation**, read what that role can do, then press **Send invitation**.
3. The invitation shows **Pending · Expires** with a date, plus its email delivery status.

The email comes from Hydrant Bots, bots@hydrant.dev. The person accepts by signing in with the GitHub account whose **verified primary email** matches the address you typed. Secondary GitHub addresses don't count. People who already use Hydrant can also accept from **All workspaces**, where pending invitations appear with **Accept invitation** and **Decline**.

Nothing happens until they accept. Opening the email, previewing the invitation or signing in grants no access.

- An invitation lasts **7 days**.
- **Resend** sends a fresh link with a new 7 days. The old link stops working.
- **Revoke** ends the invitation for good. You can invite them again later.
- To change the offered role, revoke it and send a new one.

:::note
A workspace can have at most 20 outstanding invitations, and each person can invite or resend 10 times an hour, across all workspaces. Pending invitations don't use a seat, but sending one needs a free seat, and Hydrant checks again when they accept.
:::

### Change someone's role

Next to a person, press **Make Admin** or **Make Member**, read the review, then press **Confirm role change**.

- Admins can make or unmake other Admins. Nobody can change the Owner's role or their own.
- Demoting an Admin to Member revokes the invitations they sent that are still pending. Their workspace access and assignments stay.
- Agent keys follow their person's current role on the next request, in both directions.

### Remove someone

1. Press **Remove** next to them.
2. The review lists their unfinished assignments: anything not Done, Canceled or in Trash, snoozed and iced work included.
3. Optionally move work first: pick someone under **Move work to**, then press **Reassign #** on each issue. Each reassignment saves separately.
4. Press **Remove and retain** to finish. Anything you didn't move stays assigned to them.

What removal does, immediately:

- They lose access to the workspace.
- Every agent key and connection they created in it is revoked, permanently. Rejoining later doesn't bring them back.
- Their pending invitations are revoked, and any ownership offer involving them is canceled.
- Their comments, edits and history keep their name. Their assignee identity stays, marked inactive, so nobody can assign them new work.

If a former member still holds unfinished work, **Departed members' work** appears for Admins and the Owner. Press **Review assignments** to reassign it whenever you get round to it.

### Leave a workspace

At the bottom of **Members**, in the **Danger zone**, press **Review leaving**, check the work you'd leave behind, then press **Leave and retain**. Your access ends, your agent keys in that workspace are revoked, your unsaved drafts for that workspace are cleared, and you land on **All workspaces**. Your work keeps your name. Other workspaces and your sign-in are untouched.

The Owner can't leave. Transfer ownership first. Someone has to hold the keys.

### Transfer ownership

A workspace has exactly one Owner. To hand it over:

1. Under **Ownership**, pick a **New Owner** from the active members and press **Review transfer**.
2. Press **Offer ownership**. If your last GitHub sign-in is more than 10 minutes old, Hydrant asks you to **Sign in with GitHub again** first and brings you back to the same review.
3. The recipient opens **Members** and sees the offer above the Danger zone. They press **Review ownership offer**, then **Accept ownership**, with the same 10-minute sign-in rule. Or **Decline offer**.

The offer lasts seven days and grants nothing while it waits. You can **Cancel offer** until they accept. When they accept, you become a Member, and your agent keys lose their administrative permissions.

This moves authority inside Hydrant only. GitHub repositories, domains, subscriptions and company ownership stay exactly where they were. The workspace's limits follow the new owner's plan from then on; acceptance is never refused over plan limits, but new additions wait if the new plan is smaller.

### Who can do what

Three roles. No custom permissions, no Viewer, no committee.

| | Member | Admin | Owner |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Read everything in the workspace, including Insights, Roadmap and the Playbook | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Create and edit issues, comments, relationships, snoozes and images; trash and restore | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Put issues into projects, milestones and cycles | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Save personal views | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Create and revoke their own agent keys and connections | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| See and revoke anyone's agent keys and connections | | Yes | Yes |
| Add a named agent | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Rename, restyle or retire named agents; record who owns one | | Yes | Yes |
| Propose Playbook changes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Publish and review Playbook guides; edit agent prompts | | Yes | Yes |
| Grant agents Playbook permissions, protect guides, set workspace defaults | | | Yes |
| Labels and workspace saved views | When enabled | Yes | Yes |
| Turn on member access for labels and views | | Yes | Yes |
| Workflow stages and sizing | | Yes | Yes |
| Create and edit projects and milestones | | Yes | Yes |
| Cycle schedule, pausing and the planning calendar | | Yes | Yes |
| Workspace name, description and icon | | Yes | Yes |
| Invite people; change roles; remove members; reassign departed members' work | | Yes | Yes |
| Read the workspace **Plan** page | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pay for the workspace's plan | | | Yes, from their own account |
| Export the workspace | | Yes | Yes |
| Transfer ownership, delete the workspace | | | Yes |
| Leave the workspace | Yes | Yes | After transferring ownership |

Agents act with the current role of the person who connected them, and never more. Some jobs stay browser-only whoever connected the agent: membership, invitations, ownership, deletion, billing, the member-access switch and editing named agents. In the Playbook, an agent also needs a permission the Owner grants under **Settings › Playbook**. A Member can also claim a named agent when Hydrant can verify they created it; see [Named agents](/help/agents/named-agents).

## What you should see

- The **People** list with each person's role and join date, and **· you** beside your own name.
- Pending invitations with their expiry and delivery status. Accepted, declined, revoked and expired ones stay listed as a record.
- After a change, a plain confirmation such as "Sam is now Admin." or "Sam was removed. Their agent keys are revoked; retained assignments keep their attribution."

## If it goes sideways

- **"Free seats one human per workspace, and that chair is taken."** The owner's plan is full. The owner upgrades under **Settings › Account**, or someone leaves. Solo Pro seats three; for more, email bots@hydrant.dev.
- **"An invitation is already pending for this address. Review it before reissuing."** Use **Resend** on the existing one instead.
- **The invitation email never arrived.** Check the delivery line under the invitation. If it says bounced, blocked or failed, fix the address and send a new invitation. "Email delivered" still isn't membership; only acceptance is.
- **"Use the GitHub account whose verified primary email matches the invitation. Nothing has been accepted."** They signed in with the wrong GitHub account, or the invitation went to a secondary address. Revoke it and invite their primary address.
- **"This invitation has expired."** It meant that date. Send a new one.
- **"Membership changed elsewhere. Review the current members before retrying."** Someone else changed the list first. Press **Review latest members** and decide again.
- **"No victory lap yet. The result is unconfirmed."** The connection dropped mid-save. Press **Retry same request**. It can't apply twice.
- **You can't find the Remove button.** You're a Member, it's your own row, or it's the Owner's row. None of those have one.

Contact: bots@hydrant.dev