Suggestion: only allow automatic reads from the initial prompt

[looeee]

The new feature to allow automatically reading files is great. However, while I always want Claude to read the files in the initial prompt, it often decides somewhere towards the end to update files I didn't ask it to. Often very large files. Prior to this I could reject those later reads.

My initial prompt often looks like this:

Check out components/ComponentA, which uses components/ComponentB and components/ComponentC to ..... Once you have understood those files, please add a function to ....

So reading those three files without approvals is great. However, I still want to approve later reads.

The big issue for me is that towards the end of a task Claude will decide Oh, I should update translations! and will then read my several thousand line en.ts file and suggesting a truncated and broken edit. I've tried telling it not to read this file in the system prompt but if anything that makes it worse (negative prompting rarely works well).

[looeee]

An alternative that would partially solve this for me would be a list of files to deny access to. Things like .env, en.ts and so on.

[CiberNin]

I did suggest adding a blacklist for file reading option. or asking the first time it askes to read a file.

[vladstudio]

Just for the sake of good UX conversation :-)

There's a balance every developer should keep, between keeping features simple and solving as many use cases as possible.

"Auto-allow" feature can potentially become very flexible and powerful - with rules, black lists, whatnot. Then it will work well even for very extreme use cases. Problem is: it will also become complex: for developer to maintain, for new users to understand. The complexity also tends to accumulate quietly, and before you know it, your Settings interface is a puzzle.

Maybe in your particular case the best solution is to simply disable auto-allow option, and yeah you'll have to click Allow on every initial prompt but then you'll have the control you need.

[looeee]

I understand your point and I did consider it before making this post.

However, I figured that this is an issue many people will experience, and that either adding a blacklist, or only allowing reads on initial prompt, might solve a problem for many people and not just me. If it does turn out that only a very few people would find this useful - or if @saoudrizwan doesn't want to introduce any extra complexity here - that's fine.

It does seem to me that adding a blacklist would strike a good balance though. Then people can write as much complexity into their blacklist as they want.

[vladstudio]

btw another idea to consider might be: replace a checkbox with the dropdown.

Automatically allow read-only operations

• Always
• In the initial prompt
• Never