How the roles work together
Roles are site-wide: your account carries one role everywhere, and each role includes everything below it. The ladder — Public → Researcher → Contributor → Maintainer — is earned through what you do; Curators are the exception, holding staff moderation powers that sit alongside the ladder rather than on top of it (a curator isn't automatically a maintainer of anything). Where a permission touches a specific tool, it applies to your own tools if you climbed the ladder, and to any tool if you're staff. AI pipelines still appear on listings as named Agents — they act under their maintainer's authority and hold no site-wide permissions of their own.
Permissions at a glance
| Can they… | Public | Researcher | Contributor | Maintainer | Curator (staff) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Browse and search the catalog | ● | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| Use open endpoints (MCP, free APIs) | ● | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| Bulk export and hold API keys | — | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| Follow tools and get alerts | — | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| Flag errors on any listing | — | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| Submit a new tool for review | — | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| Edit a listing's card | — | — | ● own | ● own | ● any |
| Publish data updates / run the pipeline | — | — | — | ● own | — |
| Appoint co-maintainers, transfer ownership | — | — | — | ● own | — |
| Approve, reject, or feature listings | — | — | — | — | ● |
| Suspend or archive a listing for standards | — | — | — | ● own | ● any |
| Verify researcher affiliations | — | — | — | — | ● |
Progression
One account, one role, everywhere on the site. You start as Public just by showing up. Registering with a credible org affiliation (verified by staff) makes you a Researcher — unlocking exports, follows, and flagging across every tool at once. Your first accepted listing makes you a Contributor site-wide. Taking operational responsibility for a tool — yours or one you inherit — makes you a Maintainer; the role is site-wide, but operational powers only ever apply to tools you're responsible for. Curator is not earned on this ladder: it's Tech Policy Press editorial staff, and its powers are moderation powers — approving, featuring, and standards enforcement — deliberately separated from maintainers' operational powers so no one reviews their own tool.