AI Studio is the administration and development layer of Writer’s platform. Writer’s developer documentation describes it as a full-stack platform and control plane in which platform and IT teams configure models, data, guardrails and observability once, and the teams they support build agents and applications on top of those controls.[1] Governance features matter for licensing because several of them are tied to the plan or to a seat type, and several change what the platform consumes. This article follows Writer’s own documents, retrieved on 2026-10-13.
What AI Studio contains
The documentation lists six areas a platform team configures: guardrails (content safety, PII protection and compliance policies), observability (event logs, agent performance metrics and session logs), encryption (management of the customer’s own encryption keys for data at rest), models (Palmyra plus external models), connected data (connectors, MCP and Knowledge Graphs) and usage and spend.[1] Developers build on it by two paths: full-code deployment with Agent Builder v2, where a customer deploys its own containerised applications to Writer under platform controls, or direct use of the Writer API and SDKs.[1]
The plans page ties the extent of AI Studio access to the plan: Starter has limited access, Enterprise has full access.[5] The plans comparison also lists agent observability, audit logs, knowledge and connector access controls, integration with third-party guardrails, role-based access, customisable roles, SAML SSO, SCIM provisioning and team and org-level policies as governance features.[5] Writer’s help centre says an Enterprise purchase includes AI Studio with guardrails, observability and access controls, SSO/SAML 2.0 and SCIM, enterprise admin and an enterprise-tier API rate limit.[12]
Roles and who can configure what
Writer’s roles system separates organisation-level and team-level permissions. Default roles are available on all accounts; custom roles are supported on Enterprise plans and can be created and modified by org admins and business admins.[3] The documented default roles are:[3]
- Org admin: automatic access to all teams as team admin, with broad configuration rights over billing, users, teams, roles, account, authentication, style guide and security.
- Business admin: business administration settings such as the style guide builder, users and billing, plus reporting; no access to authentication or data and security settings.
- IT admin: authentication and data and security settings, full AI Studio access, and the right to view and manage guardrails, models and credentials for third-party integrations.
- AI Studio full access, builder, team admin and view only: graded rights over agents, Knowledge Graphs, API keys and voices. A builder can create agents but cannot deploy its own agents; full access can deploy any agent and view consumption data.
- Team admin, Team member and Limited team member: team-scoped roles. A Limited team member can run playbooks shared with them but cannot create, edit, publish or share playbooks.
A person often needs more than one role: the article’s example is a marketing manager who needs Team admin for team settings and AI Studio builder to create a chat agent.[3] The role assignments, together with seat type, determine who consumes credits: Lite seat users cannot hold org-scoped roles, cannot access AI Studio, team or org settings and are limited to the Team Member role.[3][11]
Model controls
An IT admin, or a custom role with that permission, controls which models WRITER Agent can use. On first use only WRITER models are enabled, with Palmyra X6 as the default; third-party models from providers such as Anthropic, Google and OpenAI are disabled until enabled, except an image generation model. An enabled model is available to all teams unless access is limited to selected teams, and admins can order models, set any enabled model as the default, and choose whether new catalogue models are enabled automatically.[4] Image generation relies on third-party models; the default image model is stated as GPT 5.4 Image2.[4]
The external models guide adds the commercial distinction between WRITER-managed models, which WRITER hosts and bills at catalogue rates and which exist only in WRITER Agent, and bring-your-own-model connections, which use the customer’s own AWS Bedrock or OpenRouter credentials, with the provider billing usage directly and WRITER adding a 10% pass-through fee. External models are available on enterprise plans, and org admins, IT admins and users with AI Studio full access roles can add and manage them.[9] The rates are explained in Palmyra models and Writer API pricing.
Connectors and the MCP gateway
Connectors let WRITER Agent reach business systems through Writer’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) gateway, which sits between the agent and the connector servers and applies the customer’s organisation, team and user access controls to each request.[2] Two types exist:[2]
- Prebuilt connectors: the documentation lists connectors including Adobe Experience Manager, Asana, Atlassian, Contentful, Databricks, FactSet, Gmail, Gong, Google BigQuery, Google Calendar, Docs, Drive and Sheets, HubSpot, Microsoft Calendar, OneDrive, Outlook, SharePoint and Teams, PitchBook, Salesforce, Semrush, Slack, Snowflake, Webflow, Wrike and ZoomInfo. Commentary: the documents describe the connection to each service, not a licence to it, so the customer’s own licence to the connected system is a separate matter.
- Custom connectors: created from an OpenAPI specification or an external MCP server, then configured in AI Studio like prebuilt ones, with authentication, access permissions and enabled tools under the administrator’s control.
Authentication uses OAuth 2.0 or API keys. Most prebuilt OAuth connectors support WRITER-managed authentication, while custom connectors and ten named prebuilt connectors (including FactSet, Gmail, the Google connectors, Snowflake, Wrike and ZoomInfo) require organisation-managed OAuth, in which the customer creates and manages its own OAuth application.[2] The documentation states that MCP connectors are currently available for WRITER Agent only; they do not support Agent Builder, no-code agents or API integrations.[2] The plans page limits the number of active connectors on Starter to three and makes it unlimited on Enterprise.[5]
Knowledge Graph
Knowledge Graph is Writer’s retrieval service. It takes content from file uploads (including PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel and CSV formats), data connectors for platforms such as Confluence, Notion, Google Drive and SharePoint, and website content, and builds an interconnected structure that agents query.[6] The Starter plan limits storage to 50 GB in a single graph, and Knowledge Graph data connectors are available only on Enterprise plans, while hosting, extraction and OCR are charged at the rates in the pricing documentation.[5][13]
Data protection and security terms
The Data Processing Agreement lists the security program, which includes annual assessments by external auditors against the SOC 2 Trust Services Criteria for Security, Availability and Confidentiality with HIPAA and HITECH requirements, and against ISO 27001:2022, ISO 27701:2019 and ISO 42001:2023, with annual independent penetration testing.[7] The plans FAQ states that HIPAA and SOC 2 Type II compliance certifications and reports are available on request for Enterprise plans, and that Writer takes a zero data retention approach and by default does not train or improve its models on customer data.[5] The Platform Services Agreement adds that Writer will not use Customer Materials to train its models, and that protected health information may not be processed without a business associate agreement.[10]
Usage and cost visibility
AI Studio’s Consumption view, available to organisation admins, shows monthly spend by agent type (API, Framework and No-Code), by model and by other services such as Knowledge Graph hosting, web access and OCR, and token use by user and agent.[8] A second Consumption page in the Billing and reporting area breaks usage and spend down by organisation, user, team and Playbook and is described in Writer plans, seats and credits.
Out of scope
This article does not review the security certifications themselves, which Writer’s trust centre provides on request, nor the licences of the third-party systems reached through connectors.