Permission modes

Claude Code has two extreme ways of working: stop and ask for approval before every action (safe, but slow), or auto-accept file edits without asking (fast, but riskier). The right choice doesn't depend on your mood — it depends on the blast radius of the action itself. Editing a local test file is

Letting a new hire freely access the cheap supplies closet saves time and is safe, but before they touch the main safe they should come ask first. The decision depends on how much damage one mistake could cause.

permission mode: The setting that decides whether Claude Code performs an action immediately or stops and waits for your approval before continuing.
blast radius: How much damage one mistake can cause — whether it stays inside one reversible file, or hits a whole system with no way back.
auto-accept edits: A mode where Claude Code changes local files without stopping to ask on every change, because a single file edit is usually reversible and easy to track.
destructive command: A shell command that deletes, overwrites, or changes data in a way that's hard or impossible to undo — for example wiping shared volumes or dropping a database table.