Safety Guard

Safety Guard — Prevent Destructive Operations

When to Use

• When working on production systems
• When agents are running autonomously (full-auto mode)
• When you want to restrict edits to a specific directory
• During sensitive operations (migrations, deploys, data changes)

How It Works

Three modes of protection:

Mode 1: Careful Mode

Intercepts destructive commands before execution and warns:

Watched patterns:- rm -rf (especially /, ~, or project root)- git push --force- git reset --hard- git checkout . (discard all changes)- DROP TABLE / DROP DATABASE- docker system prune- kubectl delete- chmod 777- sudo rm- npm publish (accidental publishes)- Any command with --no-verify

When detected: shows what the command does, asks for confirmation, suggests safer alternative.

Mode 2: Freeze Mode

Locks file edits to a specific directory tree:

/safety-guard freeze src/components/

Any Write/Edit outside src/components/ is blocked with an explanation. Useful when you want an agent to focus on one area without touching unrelated code.

Mode 3: Guard Mode (Careful + Freeze combined)

Both protections active. Maximum safety for autonomous agents.

/safety-guard guard --dir src/api/ --allow-read-all

Agents can read anything but only write to src/api/. Destructive commands are blocked everywhere.

Unlock

/safety-guard off

Implementation

Uses PreToolUse hooks to intercept Bash, Write, Edit, and MultiEdit tool calls. Checks the command/path against the active rules before allowing execution.

Integration

• Enable by default for codex -a never sessions
• Pair with observability risk scoring in ECC 2.0
• Logs all blocked actions to ~/.claude/safety-guard.log