Promptles
Constraints

Fence Risky Commands

Block risky commands with permission rules and limited logins, then say in the prompt what needs your OK.

Writing "be careful" in a prompt is a request, not a safeguard. For commands that must never run without you, add a permission rule in Claude Code's settings (managed with /permissions), such as an ask rule on Bash(git push *) and a deny rule on Bash(git push --force *), and give tools only the logins the task needs. In the prompt, still say which steps need your OK. Vague: "Clean up the project, carefully." Specific: "Clean up the leftover build files. Show me the list and wait for my OK before deleting anything or rewriting history."

Where you'll practice this

4 Promptles scenarios teach this principle directly. Each one drops you into a real engineering ticket and asks you to write the prompt you'd send to Claude Code.

  • Share Sentry with the Team

    Engineers on `billbird/app` keep pasting Sentry error reports into Claude Code by hand. You want all of them to have Sentry's hosted MCP server, set up the same way. It signs each person in with OAuth (a browser login, so nobody handles a token). It offers read tools and one…

  • Undo It Safely

    Two things went wrong this morning. PR #212, the booking discounts change, was merged into the shared `main` yesterday as merge commit `a1b2c3d`, and it broke booking checkout in staging. Five teammates have pulled `main` since. Separately, while tidying your local…

  • Rebase Before Review

    Esther asked you to rebase `feature/csv-export`, which exports bookings to a spreadsheet, so her review shows only your changes. The branch is 14 commits behind `main` and already pushed, so after the rebase it can only be updated with a force push (replacing the branch on…

  • Allow Only What's Needed

    Approving every Gmail search by hand got tedious, so a teammate added the whole Gmail server to the project's Claude Code allow list (the permission rules that let tools run without asking). Searches and reads now run straight through, as hoped. So does sending: yesterday a…

Other principles in Constraints