Privileged access to managed content is disclosed. In some embodiments, a privileged portion of application code manages user access to managed content at a level of access greater than the user would otherwise be afforded. The privileged code moves a content management session up or down in levels of access as required to allow a user to perform through the application one or more specific actions it is desired to permit the user to do in a particular context (e.g., at a particular time in the lifecycle of an item of content and/or a particular point in a business process or work flow), including to permit the user to perform an action it is not desired to let the user perform in other contexts, such as write a particular value to a content item it is not desired to allow the user to write to otherwise.