Contextual Access
have broad access to tools, but enterprises need fine-grained control. Arcade’s contextual access lets you govern visibility and behavior at every stage of execution — who can see a tool, what inputs are allowed, and what comes back.
You connect your own access-control, compliance, or transformation logic to the Arcade Engine. Your rules run inline during with no changes to your tools or required.
What you can do
- Control visibility — Decide which tools each can see based on role, team, entitlement, or any signal from your IDP
- Validate requests — Enforce policies before execution (e.g., block certain domains, require org-scoped inputs)
- Transform payloads — Enrich inputs, inject secrets, redact PII from outputs, or filter content
- Audit every interaction — Route all calls through your security and logging infrastructure
How it works
Contextual access is powered by Logic Extensions, a framework that allows you to hook in and add logic directly to Arcade’s execution flow. Arcade calls your server at three predefined hook points in the lifecycle:
| Hook point | When it runs | What it can do |
|---|---|---|
| Access Hook | When listing tools for a user | Allow or deny tools the user can see |
| Pre-Execution Hook | Before each tool execution | Allow, deny, or modify inputs |
| Post-Execution Hook | After tool execution | Allow, deny, or modify the result (output and content blocks) |
You only implement the hooks you need. Configure everything through the Dashboard.
Get started
How Hooks Work
Understand hook points, execution order, extensions, failure modes, and how the Arcade calls your webhook server
Rate Limiting
Cap how often tools can be called with built-in rate limits enforced by the Arcade Engine, no webhook server required
Run an Extension
Run open-source example webhook servers to get started with Contextual Access
Build Your Own
Build your own Logic Extensions webhook server from the OpenAPI spec
API Reference
Interactive API reference for the Contextual Access webhook contract
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