shiro-neko/docs/permissions.md

Permissions

Which tool calls run, which stop to ask, and which are refused.

{
  "permission": {
    "bash": { "*": "ask", "git *": "allow", "bun test": "allow" },
    "edit_file": { "*": "ask", "src/generated/*": "deny" },
    "read_file": { "*": "allow", "*.env": "deny" }
  }
}

Three decisions: allow runs it, ask prompts, deny refuses without asking.

Why rules match the command, not the tool

The obvious design gates by tool name: bash needs approval, read_file does not. That is what this used to do, and it fails for a reason worth stating.

bash covers git status and rm -rf equally. A user working through a batch of edits presses a — always allow — on the first prompt, and every later command runs unasked, including the one they would have refused. The gate was strongest at the moment it mattered least and gone by the time it mattered.

Rules match the subject of a call: the command for bash, the path for anything touching a file, the pattern for a search. git * can be allowed while * still asks, so the prompts that remain are the ones worth reading.

Subjects per tool

Tool	Matched against
bash	the command, e.g. git status --porcelain
read_file write_file edit_file multi_edit list_dir	the path
apply_patch	every file marker path in the patch
web_fetch	the URL
read_many_files	every path in the batch; one match is enough
glob grep	the pattern
git_diff git_log git_blame	the path, when given
git_show	the ref
task	the subagent description
skill	the skill name
everything else	* only

For apply_patch and read_many_files each path is its own subject, matched independently. A deny like src/generated/* catches a patch that touches one generated file among four, and a rule matching any one of a batch's paths decides the call — one bad path is enough. A path that contains spaces stays a single subject rather than being split into two, so *.ts matches my file.ts as one thing.

A tool with no subject — git_status takes no arguments — matches * and nothing narrower. That is why a rule for it is a plain decision rather than a pattern table:

{ "permission": { "git_status": "allow" } }

Patterns

* spans any characters including newlines, ? matches exactly one. Everything else is literal: *.env does not match configxenv, because a rule you wrote by hand should mean what it looks like.

Newlines matter for bash, where a command can legitimately contain one:

{ "permission": { "bash": { "git commit *": "allow" } } }

That still matches git commit -m "line one\nline two".

Order is the whole rule

Later rules win. A config reads top to bottom, so put the catch-all first and narrow after it:

{ "permission": { "bash": { "*": "ask", "git *": "allow", "git push *": "ask" } } }

git status is allowed, git push origin main asks again. Reverse those last two and git push is allowed, because the broader rule now comes last.

This is plain precedence with no special case for deny, and that is deliberate. An earlier version made deny win wherever it sat, on the theory that a refusal should be impossible to undo by accident. It made the most useful shape in the system unexpressible:

{ "permission": { "edit_file": { "*": "deny", "src/generated/*": "allow" } } }

Default-deny with narrow exceptions is what a careful user writes, and it is the same shape as *.env denied while *.env.example is allowed. Refusals that must never be configurable belong in the guard plugin, which runs ahead of this and which --yolo cannot reach.

Defaults

With no permission config:

Tool	Default
read_file read_many_files	allow, except *.env, *.env.*, and *.pem which are deny. *.env.example is allowed
glob grep list_dir	allow
the git tools	allow — they cannot mutate anything
task, and every session tool	allow — they touch the agent's own state
write_file edit_file multi_edit apply_patch bash web_fetch	ask
anything else, including every mcp__* tool	ask

Credentials are denied on read rather than gated, because there is no recovery. A model that greps for a config value and finds a secret has that secret in its context, on the wire, and in the session file on disk. .env.example is the one such file that is safe and the one a model usually wants.

An unrecognised tool asks. MCP tools are third-party code with unknown side effects, so mcp__fs__read_file sounding harmless is not a reason to let it through.

Config replaces a default, it does not merge

Anything you say about a tool replaces its default for that tool entirely:

{ "permission": { "read_file": { "*": "allow" } } }

That allows reading .env. Merging pattern-by-pattern would leave you unable to remove a default deny rule, and a safety feature you cannot switch off is one people work around instead.

A wildcard in a tool key covers a family:

{ "permission": { "mcp__*": "deny" } }

What always grants

Answering a at a prompt whitelists a pattern, not the tool. For bash that is the command's first word:

bash wants to run
git status --porcelain
y allow once | a always allow bash git * | n deny

Approving that runs git log and git diff unprompted for the rest of the session, and still asks about npm publish. Everything else falls back to *, because a path pattern guessed from one path is more often wrong than useful.

Grants last for the session and are never written to disk. They also cannot outrank a rule: with "rm *": "deny" in your config, a on a different command does not unlock rm.

The repeat guard

A tool called three times in one turn with identical input asks for approval even when the rules allow it:

read_file is repeating the same call
allowed by the rules, but this is the third identical call this turn
src/session.ts

A model repeating an identical call is not making progress: either it is ignoring the result, or the result is not what it needed. bash: allow is a statement about which commands are safe, not permission to run one in a loop until the step limit ends the turn.

The count is per turn and resets on the next prompt, so a tool used once in each of several turns never trips it.

Order of checks

guard plugin        refusal; --yolo cannot reach it
  → permission rules   allow / ask / deny, matched on the subject
    → repeat guard       an allowed call that has now repeated 3x asks anyway
      → the tool runs

A denied call provably never executes: the decision is enforced by the SDK, which never reaches the tool's execute. A tool cannot forget to honour a denial because the tool is not consulted. See architecture.

--yolo

Folds ask into allow. It does not touch deny, from your config or from the defaults, and it does not reach the guard plugin. So --yolo still refuses to read .env and still refuses rm -rf.

In headless mode there is no terminal to prompt on, so an ask is denied and the model is told. --yolo is what makes a headless run able to write. See headless.

A typo never widens access

An unrecognised decision string is dropped when the config is parsed, which leaves the pattern unmatched and the tool on its default:

{ "permission": { "bash": { "*": "alow" } } }

bash asks, as it would with no config at all. The alternative — treating an unparseable value as allow — would mean one misspelling silently removing the gate.

Worked examples

Trust the tools you run constantly, keep the rest gated.

{
  "permission": {
    "bash": {
      "*": "ask",
      "git status*": "allow",
      "git diff*": "allow",
      "git log*": "allow",
      "bun test*": "allow",
      "bun run typecheck": "allow"
    }
  }
}

Let it edit source, never touch generated output or CI config.

{
  "permission": {
    "edit_file": { "*": "ask", "src/*": "allow", "src/generated/*": "deny", ".github/*": "deny" },
    "write_file": { "*": "ask", "src/generated/*": "deny", ".github/*": "deny" }
  }
}

Read-only, enforced by rules rather than by asking. The plan agent variant does this by withholding the tools, which is stronger; use rules when you want the tools present but inert.

{ "permission": { "write_file": "deny", "edit_file": "deny", "multi_edit": "deny", "apply_patch": "deny", "bash": "deny" } }

An unattended job that may commit but never push.

{
  "permission": {
    "bash": { "*": "deny", "git add *": "allow", "git commit *": "allow", "bun test*": "allow" }
  }
}

What this is not

Rules gate the call, not what the command does once it runs. bash with git * allowed will run git config --global and a git alias that shells out to anything. There is no sandbox: no seccomp, no Seatbelt, no filesystem jail around the shell.

jail() keeps the file tools inside the workspace — see tools — and the guard plugin refuses a list of irreversible commands. Both are worth having and neither is containment. Run the agent in a container or a VM when the workspace is not the trust boundary.