Approvals and safety

Approval modes

Pick one in the bar under the message box:

• Ask: the agent asks before it changes files or runs commands.
• Auto: routine steps go ahead; IXEL One asks about the rest.
• Don’t ask: the agent goes ahead without asking. Some things still ask, such as leaving the sandbox or a policy rule that says so.

Plan mode (also in the bar) only reads and plans. It changes nothing until you approve the plan.

Rules

Allow and deny rules decide which tools, paths and commands need your yes. /permissions shows the rules in effect and where each comes from.

The sandbox

On macOS (Seatbelt) and Linux (bubblewrap), the agent’s shell commands run in an OS sandbox. Leaving it always asks first, in every mode.

IXEL One also scans for secrets, checks new dependencies, and guards against prompt injection and data leaving your computer.

Policy

Write rules as code:

• .ixel/policy.yaml in a project applies to that project.
• policy.yaml in your IXEL settings folder applies to every project.

A policy can deny or ask for tools, paths and commands. Its rules hold in every approval mode: deny refuses, and ask needs your yes even in Don’t ask. It can also list which models may work there. A policy file with a mistake makes every call ask, and names the mistake.

/policy shows the policy in force.

Trusting a project

A project can bring its own hooks, plugins and language servers. IXEL One asks before it runs them: Trust this project? Any change to a project’s hooks asks again.

The vault

The vault keeps secrets the agent’s shell commands can use without ever seeing them. Each secret reaches commands as an environment variable. Anywhere the agent could see it, in tool results and the transcript, it is masked as [secret:NAME].

/vault                  list them
/vault set NAME value   add one (the value is hidden on screen and kept out of history)
/vault remove NAME      remove one

Secrets are kept in the Keychain on macOS, with DPAPI on Windows, and in a private file on Linux.

Where settings live

Your IXEL settings folder is ~/.ixel on macOS and Windows. On Linux it is ~/.config/ixel (with data in ~/.local/share/ixel), unless you already have ~/.ixel.