The Register Meet CLAUDE_CODE_EVEN_MORE_DANGEROUSLY_SKIP_PERMISSIONS
Anthropic, prone to pronouncements about model safety, has given developers using Claude Code the opportunity to throw its guardrails out the window. The company's latest Claude Code build (v2.1.311) supports an environmental variable designed to allow the AI agent to run the rm command, which deletes files, without asking for approval.
The designated environmental variable (a value developers set in their shell) is called:
CLAUDE_CODE_EVEN_MORE_DANGEROUSLY_SKIP_PERMISSIONS.
Daisy Hollman, a member of technical staff at Anthropic, announced the change in a social media post.
"Fun fact: --dangerously-skip-permissions doesn't actually approve EVERYTHING – we still block some obvious things like rm -rf ~," she wrote. "But today's release will let you disable this if you really want, by setting a new env var CLAUDE_CODE_EVEN_MORE_DANGEROUSLY_SKIP_PERMISSIONS=1"
Not everyone believed Hollman, perhaps due to the absurdity of the variable name or because the change isn't listed in the v2.1.311 change log. But she offered reassurance that it's real.
"Not a joke!" she responded. "I hope this helps, and I hope the variable name is memorable."
The name is easy to remember because it is very much like the aforementioned Claude Code flag --dangerously-skip-permissions. That command line flag enables bypassPermissions mode, which first surfaced in Claude Code v1.0.18, on June 9, 2025.
Claude Code has several permission modes: default, acceptEdits, plan, auto, dontAsk, and bypassPermissions. Auto mode, which nominally allows everything but runs background safety checks, became the default in August; bypassPermissions also nominally allows everything, without the safety checks.
But there are still exceptions that do not get automatically approved and require a permission prompt, such as rm and rmdir.
The new CLAUDE_CODE_EVEN_MORE_DANGEROUSLY_SKIP_PERMISSIONS environmental variable removes this last agentic restraint, though other things like managed settings may impose their own limitations.
It's perhaps worth noting that there are numerous accounts of AI agents issuing commands like rm -rf ~ that wipe hard drives or take other action that results in data loss. But as they say, you only live once. ®
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Key Terms Explained #
AI Agent An autonomous AI system that can perceive its environment, make decisions, and take actions to achieve goals.
Anthropic An AI safety company founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers, including Dario and Daniela Amodei.
Claude Anthropic's family of AI assistants, including Claude Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus.
Guardrails Safety measures built into AI systems to prevent harmful, inappropriate, or off-topic outputs.