The first time I ran Claude Code on a real task — migrate a Spring Boot service, restructure a few packages, update some config — I spent more time clicking Approve than I did reviewing what it actually did.
Every file read. Every git status. Every ls. Approve. Approve. Approve.
By the time Claude finished, I'd clicked through forty-something prompts and was no closer to trusting what had changed than when I started.
The permission system was doing the opposite of what it should: instead of giving me control, it had trained me to rubber-stamp everything without reading it.
That's the problem this post is about. Not how to skip permissions entirely — that's a different conversation — but how to configure them so you're approving things that actually matter, and not thinking twice about the ones that don't.
