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Report a missing grant as a missing grant - #150

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davidmckayv merged 1 commit into
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fix/a-missing-grant-is-reported-as-a-missing-grant
Aug 22, 2026
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Report a missing grant as a missing grant#150
davidmckayv merged 1 commit into
mainfrom
fix/a-missing-grant-is-reported-as-a-missing-grant

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Closes #141.

What happened

A person asked what was in a PRD the Bot had just found in their Drive. Instead of reading it, the Bot opened docs.google.com in its own container, hit Google's sign-in page, and asked them to take the wheel and sign in.

Only search_files was granted. read_file_content was not. So the Bot could find the document and had no way to read it — and rather than say that, it fell back to the browser, and a gap in what it holds surfaced as an authentication problem somewhere else entirely.

The person already had access. What was missing was the Bot's, not theirs, and nothing on screen said so. Their reaction was the correct one: "this is wrong, it should tell me what's in the PRD, not sign me in".

The fix

The guidance a Bot gets about its grants already told it not to browse to a vendor it holds tools for — that was the other half of this issue, fixed earlier. It now also covers the case where it holds some of a vendor's tools and not the one it needs:

If one of these systems is involved and no tool above covers the part you need, that is a missing grant and not something to work around. Say so plainly, name the capability you would need, and say an administrator can grant it on that connector. Do not reach for the browser, do not ask the person to sign in, and do not ask them to fetch it for you: they already have the access, and the thing that is missing is yours, not theirs.

The last clause is there because "could you paste it in for me" is the same mistake wearing a hat.

Driven in Chrome, on the real repro

Revoked read_file_content from Risk Analyst on /admin/plugins/google-drive, leaving search_files and get_file_metadata — the exact state from the issue. Then asked, through the @ picker:

Find my OpenBot PRD in Google Drive and tell me what is in it.

It called search_files and get_file_metadata (visible as tool pills), found the document, reported its title, type, modified time, owner, size and link, noted the two earlier copies, and then:

I can find the files and metadata, but this Google Drive connector does not currently expose a capability to read/export the body text of a Google Doc. To tell you what is inside the PRD, I'd need a Drive/Docs capability such as read document contents or export Google Doc as text/Markdown/PDF granted on the connector.

No browser. No sign-in wall. No asking the person to fetch it. It named what it would need and where it would be granted.

It says "read document contents" rather than read_file_content because the tool is not in its list at all — it can only describe the capability, not name a tool it was never told about. That is the honest version, and it still points at the screen that fixes it.

The grant was restored afterwards.

Tests

One added to the existing what a Bot is told it holds suite, asserting the guidance names a gap as a grant to ask for, names the capability, says an administrator can grant it, and does not send the person to a sign-in box. Whitespace-normalised, because the guidance is assembled line by line and a sentence spans a newline wherever the source happened to wrap.

Asked what was in a PRD it had just found in Drive, a Bot opened
docs.google.com in its own container, met Google's sign-in page and asked
the person to take the wheel and sign in.

Only search_files was granted. read_file_content was not. The Bot could
find the document and had no way to read it, and rather than say so it
fell back to the browser, so a gap in what it holds surfaced as an
authentication problem somewhere else entirely. The person already had
access. What was missing was the Bot's, not theirs, and nothing on screen
said that.

The guidance a Bot gets about its grants already told it not to browse to
a vendor it holds tools for. It now also says what to do when it holds
some of a vendor's tools and not the one it needs: say so plainly, name
the capability, and say an administrator can grant it on that connector.
Not the browser, not a sign-in request, and not asking the person to
fetch it, which is the same mistake wearing a hat.

Closes #141.
@davidmckayv
davidmckayv merged commit 4d6257c into main Aug 22, 2026
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@davidmckayv
davidmckayv deleted the fix/a-missing-grant-is-reported-as-a-missing-grant branch August 22, 2026 04:24
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A Bot with a partial connector grant browses the vendor instead of saying what it cannot do

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