Mostafa Shabanpour
ClickUp currently ties all sharing, permissions, and asset ownership to individual users. There is no concept of an organizational role/position that carries permissions and owned assets independently of the person filling it.
The problem:
In any organization with staff turnover or role changes, two critical issues arise:
  1. Permission chaos on every personnel change:
New hire joins → Admin manually shares dozens of Spaces, Folders, Lists, Views, Dashboards.
Someone leaves → Admin manually revokes and reassigns everything.
No single source of truth for "what does this position need access to?"
  1. Knowledge & asset loss when people leave (especially AI Agents):
Users build Super Agents with custom instructions, knowledge bases, and workflows tailored to their role (e.g., a Copywriter Agent, a Campaign Analyst Agent).
These Agents are tied to the individual creator with personal sharing settings.
When that person leaves the organization, their Agents leave with them. The admin has no authority over personally-owned Agents.
The replacement hire starts from zero: rebuilding Agents, re-uploading knowledge, re-configuring workflows. All institutional AI knowledge is lost.
This is especially painful because building a good Agent represents weeks of iteration, prompt refinement, and domain knowledge encoding. It's organizational IP, not personal property.
Why Teams don't solve this:
Teams group people, not positions. They don't transfer ownership of assets (like Agents) when someone leaves. And admins still can't reclaim personally-owned Agents from departed users.
Proposed solution:
Introduce Organizational Roles/Positions as a first-class entity for both permissions AND asset ownership:
Permissions:
Define roles ("Brand Manager", "Copywriter", "Campaign Lead") that exist independently of who fills them.
Assign sharing & permissions to Roles for Spaces, Folders, Lists, Views, Dashboards, Custom Fields.
When the person changes, simply reassign the Role → all permissions transfer instantly.
A person can hold multiple Roles, inheriting combined permissions.
Agent & Asset Ownership:
Allow Agents (and other key assets) to be owned by a Role, not just an individual.
Agents owned by a Role are accessible to whoever currently holds that Role.
When a person leaves, Role-owned Agents remain in the organization. The new hire inherits them immediately.
Admin always has visibility and override authority over Role-owned Agents (unlike personal Agents today).
Option to enforce a policy: "All Agents created by this Role must be Role-owned" to prevent personal hoarding of organizational AI.
Audit & governance:
See who held which Role and when.
Track Agent ownership history and modifications.
Integration with HR/SCIM so role changes auto-propagate.
Example:
A Copywriter builds a "Brand Voice Agent" with detailed tone guidelines, past campaign knowledge, and content templates. They set it as owned by the "Copywriter" role. Six months later, the Copywriter leaves. New hire arrives, gets assigned the "Copywriter" role, and instantly has:
Access to all relevant Spaces, Lists, and Views
The fully-trained Brand Voice Agent ready to use on day one
Zero admin tickets, zero lost knowledge
Why this matters:
  • Eliminates repetitive admin work on personnel changes.
  • Prevents loss of organizational AI knowledge when people leave.
  • Treats Agents as organizational assets, not personal toys.
  • Reduces onboarding time for new hires from weeks to minutes.
  • Aligns with how enterprises think about access and IP: by role, not by name.
  • Scales for organizations with high turnover without constant admin intervention.