Permissions & autonomy

The modes chapter taught the judgment: match latitude to what a wrong answer costs. Roles put that judgment in the chat; permissions put it in a setting - the course’s control principle made concrete. The role decides how Copilot works; the permission level decides how much it may run without asking you first.

Take the scenario this course follows: the change to shared-lib is ready - the library a dozen services import. Every consequential action during that change should cross your desk before it executes. One repo over, in your own orders-service, the same engineer wants almost nothing interrupted. Permissions are how both of those postures become deliberate settings instead of defaults you forgot you had.

The lessons

• Levels · manual, assisted, allow all - Manual permissions, Assisted permissions, and Allow all, plus where Autopilot actually fits.
• The checkpoint · risky commands - the approval prompt: the one place autonomy pauses at the default, and why on shared code you keep it.
• Match · autonomy to blast radius - the payoff: tight on the library, loose on your own app, same engineer, opposite settings.

Start with the levels - the settings you are choosing between. What each permission level auto-runs.