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Tools & Trust

Three Automation Modes

Combine trust settings into "safe-and-automatic / nearly fully automatic / fully automatic" launch commands, then turn them into aliases.

The trust mechanism from the last chapter — this chapter turns it into three modes you’ll use every day. The difference comes down to “how many actions skip approval.”

kiro-cli chat

Pair it with an agent that has allowedTools set up (read actions skip approval) plus a shell allowlist:

  • Reading files and searching skip approval
  • Commands on the allowlist (git, npm, pnpm, …) are allowed automatically
  • Writing files, and commands outside the allowlist, still ask you

→ Automatic enough while still keeping guardrails — this is the right choice most of the time.

Mode two: nearly fully automatic (for projects you trust)

kiro-cli chat --trust-tools=read,write,grep,glob,code
  • Building on mode one, even writing files skips approval
  • Shell is still gated by the agent allowlist

→ Let it edit files freely, but arbitrary commands are still blocked.

Mode three: fully automatic (let it run / batch)

kiro-cli chat --trust-all-tools
  • All tools skip approval, including arbitrary shell

The version where no one’s watching and it just finishes on its own:

kiro-cli chat --trust-all-tools --no-interactive "Read through the project, finish the TODOs, add tests and run them, then summarize"
✕

Mode three allows arbitrary commands like rm and sudo. Only use it in an environment you trust and where breakage doesn’t matter — don’t point it at important folders or production.

Turn them into aliases

Write the three modes into ~/.zshrc (or ~/.bashrc) so you only need to type a short name from now on:

alias k='kiro-cli chat'                                          # Mode one
alias kw='kiro-cli chat --trust-tools=read,write,grep,glob,code' # Mode two
alias kauto='kiro-cli chat --trust-all-tools'                    # Mode three

After saving, reload:

source ~/.zshrc

Batch-run multiple projects

Mode three combined with headless lets you sweep across several folders in parallel:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
projects=(~/proj/a ~/proj/b ~/proj/c)
for p in "${projects[@]}"; do
  ( cd "$p" && kiro-cli chat --trust-all-tools --no-interactive \
      "Finish this project's TODOs and run the tests, then summarize" > kiro-run.log 2>&1 ) &
done
wait
echo "All done — see kiro-run.log in each project for results"

Each project runs in its own folder, logs are kept separate, and conversations are isolated by directory, so they won’t collide with each other.

TIP

Both --trust-tools and --trust-all-tools only grant trust for this one session — once you close it, it’s gone, and it won’t dirty your default settings. For permanent approval-free access, write it into the agent’s allowedTools.

In the next section we’ll move on to agent configuration, turning this trust into reusable roles.