Permission Panther: Permissions for killer apps

Hi HN! Dan Goodman here, creator of Permission Panther.

Like many of you I am a builder, I like to build projects, tools, and products that others find value in.

However every time I’ve made something, there was always an enormous amount of work that would go into (what I call) “productizing” it: Allowing users to invite others to dashboards, features based on subscription tier, admins to control access levels of other members, and many more access control related tedious tasks that weren’t working on my core product.

In fact, it was an IndieHackers post I made earlier this year that sparked my journey to solve this: [https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-do-you-guys-productize...

I looked at existing permissions and access control solutions, but trying to learn their schema definitions, user and resource architecture, novel terminology, setup hosting, then finally integrate seemed like it would take longer than just building a custom solution.

After speaking with a few other devs who implemented similar systems, I got the same feedback: custom was faster and easier than existing solutions.

I saw this as an opportunity to squash this problem and deliver on the promise that existing solutions miss the mark on: To allow developers to spend less time on permissions and access control, and more time building our core products.

So I created Permission Panther: A permissions platform for developers who want to spend less time on permissions.

Some of the best features of Permission Panther:

1. Any developer can understand and implement it in minutes, not days 2. No complex schemas or entity definitions, while still enabling advanced features like inheritance for permissions and objects 3. The ability to list relations in both directions: Ask questions like “what resources does user have ‘WRITE’ permissions on?” And “what users can ‘READ’ this resource?” 4. Open source! Host it yourself with just a single binary/container and a few environment variables 5. A managed offering with pricing that any project can afford (built-in free usage, scalable pricing model)

Early feedback so far has confirmed the problem and solution:

I always find creating permissions to be the biggest time-draining PITA, which involves a lot of repetition. Glad there is an easier solution, particularly a platform-agnostic one.

I’ve just released it as an open source project on GitHub, and am excited to share!

If anyone is interested in learning more about the managed offering, I’m giving unlimited free usage to users who are willing to provide feedback and share what problems they are solving while in early access! If you want to join the early access group let me know in the comments, drop an email at https://permissionpanther.com, or shoot me a DM on Twitter @Dan_The_Goodman if you’re interested!