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Add permissions to a key without affecting existing permissions. Use this for privilege upgrades, enabling new features, or plan changes that grant additional capabilities. Permissions granted through roles remain unchanged. Duplicate permissions are ignored automatically, making this operation idempotent. Important: Changes take effect immediately with up to 30-second edge propagation. Any permissions that do not exist will be auto-created if the root key has the required permissions. Required permissions:
  • api.*.update_key (to update keys in any API)
  • api.<api_id>.update_key (to update keys in a specific API)
See the API reference for the full HTTP endpoint documentation.

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Usage

unkey api keys add-permissions [flags]

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Flags

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--key-id
string
required
The key ID to add permissions to. This is the database identifier returned from keys.createKey (e.g., key_2cGKbMxRyIzhCxo1Idjz8q). Do not confuse this with the actual API key string that users include in requests.
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--permissions
string[]
required
Comma-separated list of permission names to add. Adding permissions never removes existing permissions or role-based permissions. Duplicate permissions are ignored automatically. Permissions that do not yet exist will be auto-created if the root key has permissions, otherwise the operation will fail with a 403 error.

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Global Flags

FlagTypeDescription
--root-keystringOverride root key ($UNKEY_ROOT_KEY)
--api-urlstringOverride API base URL (default: https://api.unkey.com)
--configstringPath to config file (default: ~/.unkey/config.toml)
--outputstringOutput format — use json for raw JSON

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Examples

unkey api keys add-permissions --key-id=key_1234abcd --permissions=documents.read,documents.write

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Output

Default output shows the request ID with latency, followed by the permissions now assigned to the key: 
req_2c9a0jf23l4k567 (took 45ms)

[
  {
    "id": "perm_1234567890abcdef",
    "name": "documents.read",
    "slug": "documents.read"
  },
  {
    "id": "perm_abcdef1234567890",
    "name": "documents.write",
    "slug": "documents.write"
  }
]
With --output=json, the full response envelope is returned: 
{
  "meta": {
    "requestId": "req_2c9a0jf23l4k567"
  },
  "data": [
    {
      "id": "perm_1234567890abcdef",
      "name": "documents.read",
      "slug": "documents.read"
    },
    {
      "id": "perm_abcdef1234567890",
      "name": "documents.write",
      "slug": "documents.write"
    }
  ]
}
Last modified on March 26, 2026