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debugging-table-access-denied

Debugs a TableAccessDeniedError from an error tracking issue, Slack alert, or user report. Use when investigating why HogQL denied a system or warehouse table and whether the occurrence is a real bug or expected behavior. Trigger terms include TableAccessDeniedError, table_access_denied, and "You don't have access to table".

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Debugging "You don't have access to table"

TableAccessDeniedError (posthog/hogql/errors.py, code table_access_denied) means the query referenced a table that access control removed from the HogQL schema. The mechanism — how and why tables get removed — is documented in posthog/hogql/ACCESS_CONTROL.md; read it first.

Hints:

  • The error proves the table exists and was denied. A nonexistent table raises Unknown table instead.
  • On an HTTP request this is an expected 4xx, never captured. An error tracking issue means it was raised in a background context — figure out which from the event's query tags (team_id, user_id, product, celery_task_id, temporal.*).
  • A system.* name is a system-table decision; a bare name is a warehouse table/view denial.
  • No user_id on the event usually means a userless Database.create_for — it fails closed, and bypass_warehouse_access_control does not cover system tables. That's a bug in the calling code.
  • Background jobs run as the resource's created_by; a creator who left the org is the known benign cause (cache warming, alerts, and exports already suppress capture for it via creator_access_revoked).
  • Otherwise it's a real access rule (RBAC or entitlement) — see the readme for how a table's access level resolves, and check the AccessControl rows for the table's access_scope.
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PostHog/posthog
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