Permissions and budgets
How much an agent may do alone, what it may never do, and what it may spend.
Axel is built so you don't babysit agents. Each agent has a runtime mode for routine permissions, a guard for the things that are never routine, and a budget.
Runtime modes
axel agent edit atlas --runtime-mode edits| Mode | |
|---|---|
autopilot (default) | Never asks. Claude Code runs with bypass permissions, Codex with --full-auto. |
edits | File edits are accepted; anything else asks you. |
supervised | Asks before every action. |
plan | Read-only: it may look and propose, not change. |
When an agent asks, the request appears inline in the thread view and in your inbox, with the file, diff or command. Answer from either place.
The guard
Whatever the mode, Axel's guard hook refuses irreversible shell commands (the kind you can't take back, like wiping a directory or force-pushing over someone's branch) and tells the agent why. Autopilot means "don't ask about the routine", not "anything goes".
Budgets
axel agent edit atlas --daily-usd 20 # or `unlimited`, the defaultAxel counts every session's input, output and cache tokens and estimates their cost. An agent past its daily budget can't be summoned again until the next day, and the refusal says how to raise it. The dashboard shows tokens and cost per thread and per agent, with a sparkline of the last hour.
Reach
Which agents an agent may message and summon is a policy too. See Agents working together.
Where these apply
Policies are enforced by Axel on your machine, and travel with every job sent to a remote host, so atlas has the same permissions and budget on the Mac mini as on your laptop.