The Rules: Always Yes, Ask Me, Never

In short

Three answers to give once and for all: always yes, ask me, never.
"Never" beats everything: if one rule bans it, no other rule can allow it.
Rules apply per project or to you everywhere, and you see them with /permissions.
Writing it in the instructions is not a guarantee: only a rule is.

Three answers, given once and for all

Instead of answering every single time, you can decide in advance. There are exactly three possible answers, and they're the same ones you'd give a collaborator:

Always yes. The things you'd approve anyway, a thousand times out of a thousand. From here on it stops asking.
Ask me. The normal behavior: it stops and waits.
Never. The things it must never do under any circumstance. It doesn't even ask: it just refuses.

An example of how to reason about it, not of what you should write: reading my files → always yes. Modifying project files → ask me, at least at first. Touching the signed contracts folder → never.

"Never" always wins

Sooner or later you'll end up with two rules that contradict each other. The question "who wins?" has a blunt answer: the ban wins. Always, no matter where it comes from.

It's not a technicality, it's a matter of common sense: a permission granted by mistake can do real damage, one ban too many costs you at most two minutes. When in doubt, the system chooses to stop.

Where the rules live

Rules live in settings files, and they exist at more than one level. For the base course, two ideas are enough:

Project rules — apply to that working folder. They're also shareable with whoever works with you.
Your rules — apply across every project you open, because they're attached to you, not to the folder.

And if you work at a company that has set its own rules, those sit above all the others and can't be overridden — that's the whole point of them.

The easy way to see what's active and where it comes from is the /permissions command: it lists the rules and, for each one, the file it comes from. From there you can also add one without going to edit anything by hand.

How far it's worth widening

The temptation, after the third day of saying yes, is to say always yes to everything. But the value of permissions isn't removing the questions: it's removing enough of them that you stay alert for the ones that remain.

If you find yourself accepting without reading, you don't have a patience problem: you have a rules problem. The repetitive ones should go into "always yes," so the few questions that do come up go back to meaning something.

And now

Rules are precision work: one thing at a time. But there's also a single dial that shifts the whole behavior at once — from "touches nothing" all the way to "never asks." Those are the modes, and they're the next lesson.

Did you get it?

Two minutes, no grade. Trying to answer — even getting it wrong — cements the concepts far more than rereading. Not in the mood? Skip it: the lesson still counts as complete.

One rule says "always yes" to something and another says "never." What happens?

You write in Claude's instructions "never touch the contracts folder." Is that a guarantee?

What's the fastest way to see the active rules and where they come from?

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