Permission cards

When Claude Code needs your permission to use a tool, such as running a command or editing a file, the tab shows a card in the conversation and waits for you. The tab’s row in the sidebar says Needs your input, and if Claudette isn’t in front, or the tab isn’t the one you’re looking at, you also get a notification.

A permission card waiting for an answer.

What a card shows

The question, such as Allow this command?, Allow editing StarfallCharacter.cpp? or Allow fetching this page?
The call’s input: the command, the file or address, or a preview of an edit’s changes as a diff.
Claude’s description of the call, and why Claude Code is asking, when it says.
A warning when a command asks to run outside the sandbox, which would give it the file and network access the sandbox keeps from it.
Who is asking, when it isn’t the main Claude: Asked by the Explore subagent: Find the auth code. The agent map highlights that subagent too.

Once you answer, the card stays in the conversation and says what happened, such as Allowed or Denied.

Answering a card

Allow lets this one call go ahead.
Always allow… shows the rule it would save, for example Bash(npm test:*), in a box you can edit to make it broader or narrower. Several rules go in one box, separated by commas.
- Save rule and allow allows the call and saves the rule to the folder’s .claude/settings.local.json, which is Claude Code’s personal, uncommitted project settings. Terminal sessions in that folder use the rule too, and later matching calls don’t ask.
- Allow for this session only allows the call and the rule until the session ends, and saves nothing. It’s also in the menu on Always allow…’s arrow.
- Cancel goes back to the first buttons.
Allow all edits this session appears when Claude Code suggests switching mode instead of saving a rule, as it does for a file edit. It allows the call and switches the tab to Accept edits mode (Permission modes).
Deny refuses the call.
Deny with a message… opens a box, Tell Claude what to do instead (optional). Deny sends it, Cancel goes back.

Always allow… isn’t offered when Claude Code says the rule would grant more than this one request does. For the rules themselves, see Claude Code’s permissions docs.

Answering from the keyboard

Ctrl/Cmd+Enter allows and Ctrl/Cmd+Backspace denies the oldest prompt waiting in the tab. Neither works while you’re typing in one of a prompt’s own fields, where Ctrl/Cmd+Backspace still deletes a word. A request Claude Code marks as one to refuse by default can’t be allowed from the keyboard.

Ctrl/Cmd+J goes to the next tab that’s waiting for you.

Several prompts waiting

Subagents working side by side can leave prompts all through a long conversation. While more than one waits in a tab, each says where it stands, oldest first: Prompt 2 of 5, with ‹ and › to go to the one before or after. Prompt 1 is the one the keyboard answers. Answering a prompt, or Claude Code withdrawing it, numbers the rest again.

When a prompt is answered elsewhere

Claude Code can withdraw a prompt it no longer needs. Its card closes and says No longer needed, or Answered in the Claude app when you answered it on a tab connected to the Claude app.

Finding a waiting prompt

A mark beside the conversation’s scroll bar shows where each waiting prompt is, and a click goes there. Finding your way explains the marks.

What never asks

Claudette only shows the prompts Claude Code actually asks for. Claude Code’s own allow and deny rules, from its settings files, still apply: a call a rule allows never reaches you, and read-only commands such as sleep never ask at all. When a rule or the mode denies a call without asking, the conversation shows a note saying so.

Settings

Settings → Notifications → A tab needs permission or an answer (on by default) sends the notification.
Settings → Keyboard → Allow the waiting prompt and Deny the waiting prompt change the shortcuts.