Members & seats
External users and allocations.
A seat assignment allocates one License seat to an external user ID. An Organization member is an external user with at least one unreleased assignment in that Organization. One member can hold seats on multiple Licenses.
An unreleased allocation is not a promise of current entitlement access. A License may expire naturally while its assignment remains unreleased. Access depends on valid Grants and License validity, not just a member row. Likewise, releasing one seat can leave another valid grant from a different License.
The external user ID comes from your application. It is not a BusinessMode Supabase user, customer profile, or email address by default. Your application authenticates the user and sends its stable ID to BusinessMode.
Machine integrations can assign a seat and release an assignment. Developers can list Organization members; the member row aggregates allocation context rather than representing a BusinessMode login.
See Access decisions for the distinction between allocation and effective authorization.