How do you troubleshoot a valid query being blocked by Row Level Security?

The first step is confirming RLS is actually the cause: querying the same table with the service_role key (server-side only, for debugging) bypasses RLS entirely, so if that query succeeds while the client's fails, the policy is the culprit rather than the query itself.

From there, check three common causes in order. First, confirm RLS is enabled on the table but that a policy actually exists for the operation being run (SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE each need their own policy). Second, inspect the policy's USING and WITH CHECK expressions for a mismatch, such as comparing auth.uid() against the wrong column, or a foreign key case-sensitivity issue. Third, verify the client is actually sending an authenticated request; an unauthenticated call runs as the anon role, which most policies deliberately restrict.

Supabase's dashboard SQL editor and Postgres logs can also show the exact policy expression being evaluated, which is usually faster than guessing from the client-side error alone.

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