Prevent destructive actions
Start with the Restrictive policy, verify the approval path, and adapt its safeguards to your environment.
Use Approval Mode with the Restrictive policy when you want known destructive actions blocked before they run and unfamiliar actions sent to you for review.
Before you begin
You need a connected agent installed in Approval Mode and a completed setup verification.
The Restrictive policy includes the Permissive Allow List and more than 300 destructive patterns in its Deny List. Unmatched actions still ask you for a decision.
Activate Restrictive
- Open Policy in Agent Approve.
- Open the policy selector.
- Select Restrictive.
- Open its Deny List and review the categories that matter to your environment.
- Confirm that Restrictive remains selected before starting unattended work.
The active policy applies to every connected integration using Approval Mode. It is not selected separately for each agent or profile.
Adapt the policy safely
Add rules for destructive operations that are specific to your projects, cloud tools, databases, or deployment process. Prefer a narrow Exact match or Starts with rule over a broad Contains rule.
If a safe action is repeatedly sent for review, use Remember decisions or add a narrow Allow List rule. Do not remove a broad Deny List category only to silence one false match.
For supported shell tools, Agent Approve checks the complete command and the commands it can parse from a compound sequence. A denied part blocks the whole request. See Policies and default behavior for the matching rules.
Confirm protection without risking data
Do not test with a real destructive command. Use Demo Mode to explore a simulated destructive request. For your connected agent, send a harmless action that is not already remembered and confirm that it reaches your device.
When a real request is denied by policy, its event details should identify the policy decision. Review the full action because pattern matching cannot predict every indirect side effect, generated script, alias, or runtime behavior.
If a request does not appear or a known rule does not match, follow No approval appears and confirm that the intended policy is active.