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This version of GitHub Enterprise was discontinued on 2023-07-06. No patch releases will be made, even for critical security issues. For better performance, improved security, and new features, upgrade to the latest version of GitHub Enterprise. For help with the upgrade, contact GitHub Enterprise support.

Repository roles for an organization

You can customize access to each repository in your organization by assigning granular roles, giving people access to the features and tasks they need.

Repository roles for organizations

You can give organization members, outside collaborators, and teams of people different levels of access to repositories owned by an organization by assigning them to roles. Choose the role that best fits each person or team's function in your project without giving people more access to the project than they need.

From least access to most access, the roles for an organization repository are:

  • Read: Recommended for non-code contributors who want to view or discuss your project
  • Triage: Recommended for contributors who need to proactively manage issues and pull requests without write access
  • Write: Recommended for contributors who actively push to your project
  • Maintain: Recommended for project managers who need to manage the repository without access to sensitive or destructive actions
  • Admin: Recommended for people who need full access to the project, including sensitive and destructive actions like managing security or deleting a repository

You can create custom repository roles. For more information, see "Managing custom repository roles for an organization."

Organization owners can set base permissions that apply to all members of an organization when accessing any of the organization's repositories. For more information, see "Setting base permissions for an organization."

Organization owners can also choose to further limit access to certain settings and actions across the organization. For more information on options for specific settings, see "Managing organization settings."

In addition to managing organization-level settings, organization owners have admin access to every repository owned by the organization. For more information, see "Roles in an organization."

Warning: When someone adds a deploy key to a repository, any user who has the private key can read from or write to the repository (depending on the key settings), even if they're later removed from the organization.

Permissions for each role

Note: The roles required to use security features are listed in "Access requirements for security features" below.

Repository actionReadTriageWriteMaintainAdmin
Manage individual, team, and outside collaborator access to the repository
Pull from the person or team's assigned repositories
Fork the person or team's assigned repositories
Edit and delete their own comments
Open issues
Close issues they opened themselves
Reopen issues they closed themselves
Have an issue assigned to them
Send pull requests from forks of the team's assigned repositories
Submit reviews on pull requests