What Claude is allowed to do
Listen instead
What Claude is allowed to do
2:31 · spoken companion to this lesson
Every time Claude wants to change a file or run a command, it stops and asks you first. That prompt is the most important safety feature you have, and it is also the one people learn to click through without reading.
Anthropic's own measurements found people approve about 93% of these prompts. When you approve nearly everything, the prompt has stopped protecting you — it is just a key you press to continue.
Read the plan, not the vibe
When Claude asks for approval, it tells you what it is about to do. Two questions are worth ten seconds:
- Which file? Look at the path. "Edit
notes.md" and "Edit.env" are very different requests. - Is it deleting or moving anything? Creating and editing are recoverable with
/rewind. Deleting through a command is not, as you saw in the last lesson.
If either answer surprises you, decline and ask what it is trying to achieve. That is not rudeness, and it costs you five seconds.
The four modes
Press Shift + Tab inside Claude to cycle through permission modes. The mode you are in is shown near the input.
| Mode | What it does | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| default | Asks before every change | Start here. Stay here while learning. |
| plan | Claude proposes the work but changes nothing | Large or unfamiliar tasks. Read the plan first. |
| acceptEdits | Auto-approves file edits | A repetitive job you have already seen it do correctly |
| auto | Runs a background safety check and blocks risky actions | Available on some accounts |
Plan mode is underused and worth the habit. For anything touching more than one file, switch to plan mode, read what it intends to do, then let it run. You catch the misunderstanding before it edits anything, rather than after.
About "always allow"
Some prompts offer to stop asking for that kind of action. It is genuinely useful for something narrow and repetitive.
Be careful with it for anything that deletes or overwrites. Once you have granted it, Claude will not check with you again this session, and the thing you were half-watching becomes the thing you were not watching at all.
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Module 1 recap