The three approval modes
One setting decides how much happens without you. Picking it per job, rather than once and forever, is most of using Cowork responsibly.
| Mode | What it does |
|---|---|
| Manually approve | Claude pauses and asks before each action |
| Automatically approve | Claude reviews each action for safety before it runs and blocks anything it decides is unsafe |
| Skip all approvals | Nothing checks its actions automatically |
Read the middle one again, because it is the one people misread. Automatic does not mean unchecked. It means the check is made by Claude rather than by you, and it can block something. Skip is the mode where nothing is checking.
One thing survives every mode: deleting files still needs your explicit permission.
Choosing per job
| The job | Reasonable mode |
|---|---|
| Reading files and producing a document | Automatic |
| Anything that writes into a shared drive | Manual, at least the first few times |
| Anything that sends, posts or pays | Manual, every time |
| A task you wrote and have run twenty times, on your own files | Automatic |
| A task reading material from outside your company | Manual, and read lesson 16 first |
Skip is not on that list on purpose. There are real uses for it, and none of them are a first task, a shared folder or anything with an outside source in it.
The question that picks the mode
Not how much you trust Claude. Ask what the worst action available in this task would do, and whether you could undo it. A wrong spreadsheet is an afternoon. A sent email is not coming back, and neither is a deleted folder.
- Run the same task under manual and then automatic. Notice which actions you would have stopped.
- Write down the one action in your job that should always be manual.
Every expert started right here.