Stop the Nagging: A Guide to Fixing Claude AI's Endless Git Permission Prompts
Z
Zack Saadioui
8/10/2025
Here’s the thing about using cutting-edge AI coding assistants: they can be AMAZINGLY powerful, but they also come with their own set of quirks. & if you’re a heavy user of Anthropic’s Claude Code, you’ve almost certainly run into one of its most… let’s call them persistent… eccentricities. I’m talking, of course, about its seemingly endless requests for Git permissions.
You’re in the zone, you’ve just prompted Claude to refactor a complex module, it’s making great progress, & then… it stops. Dead in its tracks. Why? To ask you, for the seventeenth time today, if it’s okay to run
1
git commit
.
It’s enough to drive you up the wall. You’ve configured the settings, you’ve told it a dozen times to just get on with it, but the permission prompts keep on coming. Honestly, it can completely derail your workflow & make you question whether the tool is helping or hindering.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. This is a widely reported issue, a major pain point for developers trying to leverage Claude for what it’s best at: automating the tedious parts of coding. So, let’s break down exactly why this is happening & what you can actually do to fix it. I’ve spent a ton of time digging through GitHub issues, Reddit threads, & my own trial-&-error to get to the bottom of this.
So, What's REALLY Going On? Why the Constant Nagging?
Turns out, it’s not just you. This isn’t a case of you missing some obvious setting. The problem is a mix of a few different factors, ranging from genuine bugs to the fundamental design of Claude’s security model.
The Permission System Itself is… Intense
The most common sentiment I’ve seen from other developers is that the permission system is, to put it mildly, "insane." It’s designed with security as the absolute top priority, which is a good thing in principle. You don't want an AI going rogue & force-pushing broken code to your main branch. But the implementation can be overly aggressive.
Here’s the core of it: Claude doesn’t just see
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git commit
as a single command. An Anthropic developer explained that for security reasons, complex commands are often broken down into smaller parts & each part is checked against the permission rules. If a command uses pipes (
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|
), arguments that look like they could be part of a shell injection attack, or other "creative" syntax that Claude comes up with on the fly, the system gets nervous & asks for your blessing, even if you’ve broadly allowed the base command.
This is why you might have
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"Bash(grep:*)"
in your allow list, but Claude will still stop & ask for permission when it tries to run
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grep -r "some-pattern" . | head -20
. The system sees the pipe & the
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head
command & freaks out, ignoring the fact that you’ve already given it the green light for
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grep
.
Yep, It’s a Bug
Beyond the overzealous security model, there's strong evidence that this is, in part, a straight-up bug. Numerous users have reported on the official GitHub repository that even with the most explicit & correct configurations in their settings files, Claude simply ignores the permissions for
1
git commit
. This seems to be especially true on macOS.
Even when users select the "Yes, and don't ask again for similar commands" option, Claude seems to get amnesia & asks again the very next time. It’s a frustrating situation where you’re following the rules, but the tool itself isn’t. The good news is that Anthropic is aware of the issue, but the fixes have been slow to roll out, leaving users to find their own solutions in the meantime.
The "Forgetting" Phenomenon
Another weird aspect of this problem is how Claude’s behavior can change within a single session. Several users on Reddit have noted that Claude will respect their settings at the beginning of a session, only to start ignoring them after a few interactions. You might have a
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claude.md
file that explicitly says "ask for permission before committing," & it works for the first two commits, but on the third, it just goes ahead & does it without asking. This inconsistency is perhaps the most maddening part of the whole experience.
How to Fix It: From Simple Hacks to "Yolo Mode"
Alright, enough complaining. Let’s get to the solutions. I’ve compiled a list of the most effective workarounds, ranging from quick fixes to more involved (but powerful) configurations.
1. The Easy Fix: Check Your Quotes
This one sounds almost too simple to be true, but it’s been confirmed to work by multiple users for the
1
git commit
issue specifically. It seems that the way Claude formats the commit command can trip up its own permission checker.
The fix is to explicitly tell Claude to use single quotes for the commit message.
When you’re prompting Claude to make a commit, try something like this:
"Can you commit the staged files? Please make sure to use single quotes for the commit message, like
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git commit -m '<your message here>'
."
A user on GitHub discovered this, & others quickly confirmed it solved their problem. It’s a small change in your prompt, but it can make a huge difference.
2. The Configuration Deep Dive: Taming
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settings.json
The "right" way to solve this is by configuring your permission files. While we know this is buggy, getting your configuration as solid as possible is still a crucial step. You have two main files to work with:
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~/.claude/settings.json
: This is your global settings file. Rules here apply to every project you work on with Claude.
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.claude/settings.local.json
: This file lives inside your project directory. It’s for project-specific settings & gets ignored by Git.
Inside these JSON files, you’re looking for the
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"permissions"
object, which contains
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"allow"
&
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"deny"
arrays. You want to add the commands you’re tired of approving to the