So, we’ve been trying out the app builder to enable our team to build simple custom dashboards against the data in our APIs.
It was working well.
We have a graphQL API that uses OAUTH to get credentials for each logged in user, which is used to access the API with user level permissions.
Cool.
Except…
Today we started seeing this:
Access forbidden. Resources with user authentication cannot be called in workflows invoked outside of Agents, Apps, and direct workflow runs.
Great. Some googling/clauding later, and it seems that the AI App builder has switched to using workflows or something for the resource calls.
Now, we’ve worked around it by turning the resource in to a shared resource that is authenticatic as a different user… but… this entirely disregards the fine grained user level permissions we have in our API, and is not a long term viable option. It’s just ensured that tomorrow people can continue to work.
Either this is a bug, and you’ll fix it - Or it was a design change, and we need a way to optionally switch it off. Or, we’ll need to look at another provider for this kind of useful AI dashboard builder. It’s critical to us to be able to enforce our user level permissions, and it seems like madness to me that this was ever considered a good idea, especially since this is all about letting people vibe code apps when they don’t know what they’re doing.
Using the new app builder to build dashboards against a GraphQL API that relies on per-user OAuth, resource calls suddenly began failing with "Access forbidden. Resources with user authentication cannot be called in workflows invoked outside of Agents, Apps, and direct workflow runs" — and the only workaround found (a shared resource authenticated as a single user) defeats the API's fine-grained per-user permissions.
AI Response
This error reflects an intentional, longstanding Retool restriction rather than a regression: resources configured with per-user authentication only pass the invoking user's credentials when called directly from an app, an agent, or a direct workflow run, and are blocked when invoked from a detached workflow context. It surfaced now because the new app builder can route resource calls through workflows/functions, so calls that previously ran in-app now execute in a workflow context that lacks the user's OAuth credentials. There is no toggle to disable the restriction itself; the reliable path is to keep the resource call executing in a supported context (app/agent/direct run) so the per-user credentials are carried through, since switching to a single shared credential is the only alternative and it inherently drops per-user permissions.
Sources
Google Sheet Error in Retool Workflows
A Retool staff reply reproduces the exact error and confirms it is an expected, non-new limitation — user-authenticated resources can't run in workflow contexts that lack the invoking user's credentials. Trigger workflows from apps
A Retool changelog post confirming the new app builder triggers workflows from functions, corroborating why resource calls now hit the workflow-context restriction on user-authenticated resources.
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Hello there @Quirkz, appreciate the detailed report here.
This is not intended behavior. We've opened an active incident and engineering is investigating!
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