1.7
Permission Modes
Why this exists
You've been approving prompts all week. At some point — probably around the fortieth one — you'll think "there must be a way to turn this off."
There is. And the moment you go looking for it is exactly the moment to understand what you'd be turning off, because the setting that makes the annoyance stop is also the setting that removes the thing standing between a misunderstanding and a mess.
The idea
Permission modes are a dial between "ask me everything" and "just get on with it." The right position depends entirely on what's in the folder.
Every time Claude Code wants to change something, it can stop and ask. How often it stops is what you're setting.
The exact names and options move around as the tool updates, so learn the shape rather than a list:
| Roughly | What it means | When |
|---|---|---|
| Ask every time | Stops before every change | New territory, real files, anything you can't easily undo |
| Ask for the risky things | Reads freely, asks before changing or running | The sensible default, most of the time |
| Don't ask | Full speed, no prompts | Throwaway folders only, where the worst case is you delete something you don't care about |
The instinct everyone has — including you, around prompt forty — is that the prompts are friction to be eliminated. Worth reframing:
The prompt is not slowing you down. The prompt is the last moment the misunderstanding is still free.
Most things that go wrong here aren't the tool malfunctioning. They're it doing exactly what you asked, where what you asked wasn't quite what you meant. The prompt is where that gap becomes visible — it says here is what I understood you to want, in specific terms, before anything happens.
Turn the prompts off and that gap doesn't go away. It just stops being visible until afterwards.
So the rule that actually works, and it's not about the mode at all:
Set the mode by the folder, not by your mood. Throwaway folder — go fast, nothing there matters. Real files — ask before changing. Something you couldn't easily rebuild — ask every time, and use plan mode as well.
The mistake to avoid isn't picking a fast mode. It's picking a fast mode once, when you were in a sandbox, and then never thinking about it again as you gradually start working on things that matter. The setting stays where you left it. Your work doesn't.
Two more things worth knowing now:
Reading is different from changing. Letting it read everything in a project is nearly always fine — the risk lives in writing, deleting and running. Most sensible defaults reflect that, and it's why "asks before changing" is a comfortable place to sit.
Approving on reflex is a real state and it arrives fast. Within a week you'll be clicking approve without reading. That's normal and mostly fine — but it means the mode is doing the work, not your attention. Which is precisely why the mode should be chosen by the folder.
Do
- Find the permission settings. Read what each option actually says.
- In
sandbox, with the cautious default on, ask Claude to change two or three files. Count the prompts. Note how it feels. - Switch to the fastest mode. Still in
sandbox. Ask for something similar. Note how that feels. - Be honest with yourself: which did you prefer? Write it down. Nearly everyone prefers the fast one, and knowing that about yourself is the point.
- Make a second folder called
matters. Put a file in it you'd genuinely be annoyed to lose — not critical, but real. - Before doing anything in
matters, set the mode deliberately. Notice that this is a decision you had to remember to make. Nothing prompted you. - Write
permissions.md: which mode for which kind of folder, in your own words, and one line on when you'll re-check the setting.
Step 6 is the whole lesson. Nothing reminds you to change the mode when you move to work that matters. That reminder has to be your own habit, which is why you're writing the rule down.
Done when
Never do
Never run in the no-prompts mode outside a throwaway folder. Not "just for this one thing", not because you're in a hurry. The whole point of the mode is that it removes the moment where you'd have noticed — so by definition you won't notice you needed it.
Never assume the mode is where you left it. Check when you switch to work that matters. It takes three seconds and it's the difference between a normal week and an interesting one.