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Resource sharing makes one user’s credentials, agents, and knowledge bases visible (usable) or editable to other users. By default, the Agent Service in AgentScope is strictly isolated per tenant — no user can see another user’s records (see Resource Model). Resource sharing is the sanctioned way to share resources while keeping data secure. Typical scenarios include:
  • Shared team API keys: one administrator configures the API key once, and everyone on the team can use it without ever seeing the secret itself.
  • Publishing an agent: offer a well-tuned agent as a service to other users, or to a whole team / department.
  • A shared knowledge base: a single indexed knowledge base (a product handbook, a policy set) is queried by an entire team instead of each user rebuilding it.
  • Co-maintaining a knowledge base: a small group jointly maintains an agent or knowledge base, and every member can edit it.

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How it works

AgentScope implements secure resource sharing through the resource access policy: it maps a viewer’s user_id to the resources they can reach — think of it as a routing table for resources. The Agent Service itself carries no user, group, or membership model; this sharing relationship can come from any identity system (config, IAM, LDAP, database). On a resource-related request, the service first resolves the viewer_id (the viewer’s user_id) and governs access through the policy’s two interfaces:
  • list_accessible decides what the viewer can see and use, and
  • can_edit decides whether the viewer may make changes.
The diagram below traces these two paths. In this flow, the service injects the viewer id and its storage instance into list_accessible and can_edit; the deployer implements the “which resources this viewer can reach” logic inside these two methods based on that input.
MethodRequiredDescription
list_accessible(viewer_id, kind, storage)YesReturn the ResourceRefs of kind that viewer_id may access, excluding the viewer’s own resources. This single method drives list, get, and runtime resolution for every shared resource.
can_edit(viewer_id, kind, owner_id, resource_id, storage)NoWhether viewer_id may modify a resource. The default derives the answer from list_accessible (grant when a matching entry carries EDIT); override it to implement custom authorization logic.
The relevant types are:
TypeRole
ResourceAccessPolicyBaseThe abstract policy the deployer subclasses and passes to create_app.
ResourceKindThe shared resource type: CREDENTIAL, AGENT, or KNOWLEDGE_BASE.
ResourcePermissionThe access level granted: READ (see and use) or EDIT (use and modify).
ResourceRefAn index to a shared resource — (kind, owner_id, resource_id, permission).
Developers / deployers implement their business-specific resource-sharing logic by subclassing and implementing ResourceAccessPolicyBase.
The default policy in the Agent Service is DenyAllResourceAccessPolicy — no resources are shared across users.

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Implementation

In the Agent Service, the deployer supplies the resource-sharing policy at the create_app entry point, telling the service who can see what. Sharing a credential, an agent, or a knowledge base differs only in the kind of the ResourceRef you return.
1

Implement a policy

Subclass ResourceAccessPolicyBase and implement the sharing logic you need. list_accessible is the abstract interface you must implement; can_edit is optional. Both are async and receive a storage argument when called, giving access to the backing store — so your implementation can freely consult an external source (your company’s user directory, an org chart, project-membership tables, an IAM service) and turn those relationships into resource grants.The class below shows the interface you fill in:
policy.py
from agentscope.app.access import (
    ResourceAccessPolicyBase,
    ResourceKind,
    ResourceRef,
)
from agentscope.app.storage import StorageBase


class MyResourceAccessPolicy(ResourceAccessPolicyBase):
    """Map a user id to the resources visible to them."""

    async def list_accessible(
        self,
        viewer_id: str,
        kind: ResourceKind,
        storage: StorageBase,
    ) -> list[ResourceRef]:
        # Look up, in your own system, the resources of the given `kind`
        # that `viewer_id` may access; no need to include the user's own
        # resources.
        ...

    async def can_edit(
        self,
        viewer_id: str,
        kind: ResourceKind,
        owner_id: str,
        resource_id: str,
        storage: StorageBase,
    ) -> bool:
        # Optional. Decide whether the user behind `viewer_id` may edit
        # this resource. By default it matches against the resources
        # returned by `list_accessible` and answers based on the
        # permission level.
        ...
2

Describe what is shared

Each shared resource is represented by one ResourceRef instance. kind is the resource type and permission decides read-only versus editable. The tabs below show shared-resource instances of each type:
from agentscope.app.access import (
    ResourceKind,
    ResourcePermission,
    ResourceRef,
)

# Share Alice's API credential with Bob as read-only.
# Bob can use this credential to create agents and run sessions,
# but never sees the credential's real value.
ref = ResourceRef(
    kind=ResourceKind.CREDENTIAL,
    owner_id="alice",
    resource_id="cred-openai-prod",
    permission=ResourcePermission.READ,
)

from agentscope.app.access import (
    ResourceKind,
    ResourcePermission,
    ResourceRef,
)

# Share the agent Alice created with Bob; Bob may also edit it.
ref = ResourceRef(
    kind=ResourceKind.AGENT,
    owner_id="alice",
    resource_id="agent-support-bot",
    permission=ResourcePermission.EDIT,
)

from agentscope.app.access import (
    ResourceKind,
    ResourcePermission,
    ResourceRef,
)

# Share Alice's knowledge base with Bob; defaults to read-only (query only).
ref = ResourceRef(
    kind=ResourceKind.KNOWLEDGE_BASE,
    owner_id="alice",
    resource_id="kb-handbook",
)
3

Install the policy

Pass the policy instance to create_app via the resource_access_policy parameter. From then on, the list and get endpoints for credentials, agents, and knowledge bases merge each viewer’s own resources with those shared to them.
app.py
from agentscope.app import create_app
from policy import MyResourceAccessPolicy

app = create_app(
    # ...existing code...
    resource_access_policy=MyResourceAccessPolicy(),
)
Shared credentials are masked in every list and get response — a viewer sees only the credential’s type and name, never the secret payload. The raw secret is resolved only inside trusted runtime paths (chat / embedding / TTS model construction) when the viewer actually runs the agent. Do not add endpoints that echo a resolved credential back to the client.
Views returned to a viewer carry an editable flag computed from the ref’s permission, so a frontend can render read-only versus editable resources without a second authorization round-trip. A viewer with only READ who attempts a PATCH/DELETE receives 403; a resource they cannot see at all returns 404.
Sharing an agent shares its configuration — display name, system prompt, and context / ReAct settings — but not its workspace content. MCP client setups, skills, and accumulated memory (MEMORY.md) live in the per-user workspace, which is provisioned fresh per viewer, so a shared agent starts from a clean workspace for each user rather than inheriting the owner’s tools and memory.Sharing this workspace-resident state is a known gap we are actively working on; follow the tracking issue on GitHub for progress.