# Disable "Edit Steps"?

**URL:** <https://forum.buildkite.community/t/disable-edit-steps/2922>\
**Category:** Features Requests\
**Created:** [May 17, 2023, 9:07am UTC](https://forum.buildkite.community/t/disable-edit-steps/2922 "2023-05-17T09:07:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 8\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![donal](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.buildkite.community/donal/32/1126_2.png) [@donal](https://forum.buildkite.community/u/donal)\
**Post date:** [May 17, 2023, 9:07am UTC](https://forum.buildkite.community/t/disable-edit-steps/2922/1 "2023-05-17T09:07:22Z")

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Hi there.

Our pipelines are managed by Terraform entirely, and we don’t want to allow editing the pipeline’s steps from the Web UI. I’d like to request a feature, maybe a pipeline setting that would be “Allow Edit Steps from the UI”. if disabled, it would replace the “Edit Steps” button with a “View Steps” button, and a read only view of the steps.

The idea here is simply to avoid accidental changes.

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**Author:** ![karen.sawrey](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.buildkite.community/karen.sawrey/32/1188_2.png) [@karen.sawrey](https://forum.buildkite.community/u/karen.sawrey)\
**Post date:** [May 17, 2023, 11:45am UTC](https://forum.buildkite.community/t/disable-edit-steps/2922/2 "2023-05-17T11:45:37Z")

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Hello, @donal! Thank you for your feedback, I will share it with the team.  
You can also try the following - you can create a new team and add the pipelines you’d like to be “read only” for the team members to it. “Read only” is the default access permission for a pipeline when you add it to a team. You can read more about this in the [Docs](https://buildkite.com/docs/pipelines/permissions#permissions-with-teams-pipeline-level-permissions).

Best!  
Karen

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**Author:** ![ian-persona](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.buildkite.community/ian-persona/32/1234_2.png) [@ian-persona](https://forum.buildkite.community/u/ian-persona)\
**Post date:** [May 17, 2023, 5:42pm UTC](https://forum.buildkite.community/t/disable-edit-steps/2922/3 "2023-05-17T17:42:31Z")

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We are also Terraforming our pipelines. We’ve disabled edit access for most users. Only Admins can edit in the web UI. That’s eliminated drift for the most part.

But it would be nice to be able to lock out changes to the steps editor in the Web UI altogether.

So +1 from me on this feature.

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**Author:** ![Ozdenyilmaz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/f08c70/32.png) [@Ozdenyilmaz](https://forum.buildkite.community/u/Ozdenyilmaz)\
**Post date:** [May 18, 2023, 7:44am UTC](https://forum.buildkite.community/t/disable-edit-steps/2922/4 "2023-05-18T07:44:48Z")

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Hi @donal, @ian-persona,

I am from the product team at Buildkite. We are currently working on a feature that will allow you to have 1 yaml definition that is applied to all pipelines across your organisation. This feature will be ready in around a month time and will be an enterprise feature. I will notify you once it’s ready so you can take a look and see if it is interesting for you.

Just a note of curiosity for me, would having one yaml step definition in that edit steps screen across all of your pipelines solve your need? Would you need multiple options to choose from?

Thanks,  
Oz

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**Author:** ![donal](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.buildkite.community/donal/32/1126_2.png) [@donal](https://forum.buildkite.community/u/donal)\
**Post date:** [May 18, 2023, 8:38am UTC](https://forum.buildkite.community/t/disable-edit-steps/2922/5 "2023-05-18T08:38:20Z")

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Thanks for the replies. Restricting edit access to admins is a great idea,and actually works really well to encourage people to not try and change the pipeline in the web UI at all!

@ozdenyilmaz - we can certainly wait a month and see if it’s suitable. One yaml step across the pipelines might be workable, depending on agent requirements but we may be open to changes in our agent requirements on our side if it helps

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**Author:** ![Ozdenyilmaz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/f08c70/32.png) [@Ozdenyilmaz](https://forum.buildkite.community/u/Ozdenyilmaz)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2023, 5:03am UTC](https://forum.buildkite.community/t/disable-edit-steps/2922/6 "2023-05-19T05:03:41Z")

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> [@donal](#):
>
> we can certainly wait a month and see if it’s suitable. One yaml step across the pipelines might be workable, depending on agent requirements but we may be open to changes in our agent requirements on our side if it helps

Hi again @donal, when you say agent requirements do you mean the queue definitions? Are you defining the queue that the steps need to run on in that yaml and that’s why you’d need multiple templates across pipelines? Maybe I am completely off the mark here so please tell me that my guess is wrong!

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**Author:** ![donal](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forum.buildkite.community/donal/32/1126_2.png) [@donal](https://forum.buildkite.community/u/donal)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2023, 10:08am UTC](https://forum.buildkite.community/t/disable-edit-steps/2922/7 "2023-05-19T10:08:43Z")

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Exactly. A slight edge case but one of our pipelines also sets BUILDKITE\_BUILD\_CHECKOUT\_PATH to force it to share a checkout directory with another pipeline (for caching and performance)

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**Author:** ![Ozdenyilmaz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/f08c70/32.png) [@Ozdenyilmaz](https://forum.buildkite.community/u/Ozdenyilmaz)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2023, 2:59am UTC](https://forum.buildkite.community/t/disable-edit-steps/2922/8 "2023-05-22T02:59:37Z")

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Thanks for explaining @donal this is very helpful. I will message you once the feature is ready for you to have a look!
