rag-access-control

RAG with Authentication, Permission Filtering, and PII Redaction

An engineer asks a question that spans public docs and confidential HR data. Without access control, the RAG system leaks salary information to anyone who asks. This pipeline authenticates the user, checks role-based permissions, retrieves only permitted documents, redacts PII (SSNs and salary figures), then generates the answer.

Workflow

question, userId
       │
       ▼
┌──────────────────────────┐
│ ac_authenticate_user     │  Verify user, return roles + clearance
└───────────┬──────────────┘
            ▼
┌──────────────────────────┐
│ ac_check_permissions     │  Evaluate role-based access
└───────────┬──────────────┘
            ▼
┌──────────────────────────┐
│ ac_filtered_retrieve     │  Retrieve only accessible documents
└───────────┬──────────────┘
            ▼
┌──────────────────────────┐
│ ac_redact_sensitive      │  Strip SSNs and salary figures
└───────────┬──────────────┘
            ▼
┌──────────────────────────┐
│ ac_generate              │  Generate answer from redacted context
└──────────────────────────┘

Workers

AuthenticateUserWorker (ac_authenticate_user) -- Returns roles: ["engineer", "team-lead"] and clearance level for the given userId.

CheckPermissionsWorker (ac_check_permissions) -- Evaluates the user's roles and clearance against required permissions for the requested resource.

FilteredRetrieveWorker (ac_filtered_retrieve) -- Maintains a document list spanning collections: "public-docs", "engineering-wiki", and restricted HR documents. Filters based on the user's permission level, returning only documents the user is authorized to access.

RedactSensitiveWorker (ac_redact_sensitive) -- Uses two regex patterns: SSN_PATTERN matching \d{3}-\d{2}-\d{4} (replaced with [SSN REDACTED]) and SALARY_PATTERN matching \$[\d,]+(?:\.\d{2})? (replaced with [SALARY REDACTED]).

GenerateWorker (ac_generate) -- Detects whether the context contains redaction markers ([SSN REDACTED] or [SALARY REDACTED]) and adjusts the generation prompt accordingly. When CONDUCTOR_OPENAI_API_KEY is set, calls the LLM with the sanitized context.

Tests

15 tests cover authentication, permission checking, document filtering, PII redaction patterns, and redaction-aware generation.

Further Reading

• RUNNING.md -- how to build and run this example