openai
Separate approval policies for read vs write operations
What feature would you like to see?
Hi Codex CLI team 👋
Currently, the approval_policy setting applies uniformly to all command executions. This means we can either:
Allow all commands automatically (never),
Prompt before every command (on-request), or
Block/disallow entirely.
However, in real development workflows it would be extremely useful to distinguish read-only operations (e.g. searching, grepping, analyzing files) from write operations (e.g. creating, editing, or deleting files).
Proposal: Introduce separate approval policies for read vs. write:
Read operations → allow automatic execution (no prompt).
Write operations → always require explicit approval.
This would give developers the convenience of seamless analysis and exploration, while still protecting against unintended or unsafe modifications to the workspace.
Example config idea:
sandbox_mode = "workspace-write" approval_policy.read = "never" approval_policy.write = "on-request"
This separation would significantly improve developer productivity and safety when using Codex CLI in real projects.
Thanks for considering this enhancement! 🙏
Are you interested in implementing this feature?
No response
Additional information
No response
Yeah, I switched from Claude Code and immediately noticed this obvious major drawback.
A whitelist of commands would be great. I don't need to be asked if i want to allow a cd command for example, or other completely safe shell commands.
