I changed from cursor to claude code a couple of weeks ago and this is the biggest difference I've noticed. cursor very rarely had to ask for permission for a command because it almost always used builtin find/read/edit tools. Whereas claude code makes extensive use of unix tools with mysterious flags which are basically impossible to whitelist and pretty impractical to manually review.
replyOverall claude code seems better at "just get things done" if you blindly trust it, but cursor was much better at keeping the human in the loop.
Regarding ulterior motives - these permissions are 'performative' in that anything you can give it permission to do, it already has the ability to do. They're app level - not OS level. So if they wanted to do something, it wouldn't require you to give permission.
replyTo be clear, I'm not accusing Anthropic of being evil black hats trying to break my computer, I'm accusing (or rather suspecting) them of pushing me towards some kind of product lock-in by making my preferred "sceptical at-arms-length user" workflow more annoying.
replyThe app is split into multiple layers.
replyJust like your browser can do everything already, but only lets websites use specific features.
Right and you rely on that browser to enforce those protections. But if the browser itself was working against you, then the permissions you tell it to give (or not) become meaningless. A good example there is trying to turn off "telemetry" on Windows.
replyIf you clutter your context window and pay for the tokens to do so and risk distracting it etc., would it obey if you included this comment in the system prompt or noted it in memory (if supported) or something?
reply “Avoid custom commands, e.g. series of pipes & substitutions, when my previously approved trustable Find/Read tools are sufficient with little downside. [Already trusted tools: x, y, z…] […]”
Not just that, the commands also have often slight variations in each new session. They still do the same, but the variations are enough so it isn't matched by the allowlist any more.
replyExactly. It’s no surprise that people just blindly hit accept on permission prompts after the 80th time Claude code asks if it’s allowed to read-only parse a csv.
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