Row-Level Security

Row-level security (RLS) moves authorization from your application code into the database itself. Instead of writing middleware that checks "does this user own this record?" on every endpoint, you define a policy once on the table: "users can only see rows where user_id matches their JWT." The database enforces this on every query — SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE — regardless of whether the query comes from your API, a direct SQL connection, or a realtime subscription.

Rach.Dev makes RLS practical by integrating it with our authentication system. The authenticated user's JWT is automatically available in RLS policy expressions via the auth.uid() and auth.jwt() helper functions. This means you can write policies that reference the user's ID, their organization, their role, or any custom claim attached to their token. Multi-tenant isolation becomes a one-line policy: "rows where org_id = auth.jwt()->>'org_id'" ensures tenants never see each other's data.

For complex authorization scenarios, you can combine multiple policies with AND/OR logic, create policies that reference other tables (e.g., "allow access if user is a member of the project's team"), and use security definer functions for reusable permission logic. We provide a policy editor in the dashboard with syntax highlighting and validation, plus a testing tool that lets you preview query results as any user to verify your policies work correctly before deploying.