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Choosing your approval level, step by step
Cowork offers three approval modes, Manual which has you validate every action, Automatic which lets Claude review itself before acting, and No approval which no longer checks anything: permanently deleting a file stays confirmed in all three modes, a task can be stopped at any time, and on a Team or Enterprise account an administrator can remove Automatic mode from the selector.
Before each task, Cowork asks you to choose an approval mode. Three modes exist as of 2 September 2026: Manual, Automatic and No approval. The choice changes what happens between the moment Claude proposes an action and the moment it actually runs.
What each mode actually checks
In Manual mode, every proposed action is shown and waits for your authorisation or refusal, one at a time. In Automatic mode, Claude keeps reviewing each action to assess its safety before running it, but without asking for your agreement: the check still exists, it is simply no longer shown. In No approval mode, this review disappears too, nothing checks an action any more before it runs.
Here is what a request for authorisation looks like in Manual mode:
Cowork proposes: move 12 files to Archives/2026
Authorise this action? [Yes] [No]In Automatic mode, this line never appears on screen: the same check happens without being shown.
What stays the same, whatever mode is chosen
Two protections run through all three modes. The first, permanently deleting a file always asks again for explicit confirmation, including in No approval mode. The second, a task in progress is cut off as soon as something seems abnormal, without waiting for it to finish on its own. These two protections do not replace the choice of mode: the mode decides what happens before the action, confirming a deletion and stopping manually decide what stays possible while it runs.
Switching according to how sensitive the task is
Manual mode is justified when the task touches an account, a site or a tool never used before with Cowork, or when a mistake would be hard to undo, a message sent, a deletion, a change to an invoice. For the rest, reading every brief before launching the task, as described in writing a brief Cowork can execute, already reduces the risk before even choosing a mode.
An option that can be missing on a business account
On a Team or Enterprise account, an administrator decides, in the organisation's settings, whether Automatic mode stays available to all members. Check for yourself on your own selector whether this mode appears or not: the documentation does not say whether it is open by default nor exactly what the display becomes once it has been removed. Faced with its absence, the useful move is to ask the administrator whether this mode has been switched off, rather than concluding it has disappeared by mistake or hunting for a hidden setting.
From the proposed action to the mandatory confirmation
A volunteer launches a Cowork task in Automatic mode on a folder of supplier invoices. Cowork proposes renaming twelve files to a new format and moving them into an archived subfolder. The volunteer closes their laptop before the task finishes.
Write in one sentence what this situation establishes, and in one sentence what it does not establish.
What this establishes: It establishes that Automatic mode let Claude assess the safety of the proposed renaming and move itself, without explicit validation from the volunteer before each action.
What this does not establish: It does not establish whether the task ran to completion after the laptop was closed, nor what Cowork actually did with the twelve files.
The three most common miscalibrations
- Trop large It establishes that Automatic mode never requires any check, whatever action is proposed.
- Trop étroit It establishes only that twelve invoice files changed name, saying nothing about the approval mode used.
- À côté It establishes that closing a laptop automatically interrupts any Cowork task in progress.
- Manual mode asks for your validation before every action Cowork proposes, without exception.
- Automatic mode lets Claude check the safety of the action itself, but without asking for your agreement.
- No approval mode no longer checks anything, neither before nor after an action runs.
- Permanently deleting a file stays confirmed in all three modes, and a task can be stopped while it is running.
- On a Team or Enterprise account, an administrator can remove Automatic mode from the mode selector.
Open a Cowork task on a low-sensitivity folder, choose Manual mode, and yourself authorise or refuse the first action Cowork proposes before letting it continue.
Every datable claim in this lesson links here to the public text behind it. A source that does not open proves nothing.
- Anthropic, using Claude Cowork safely, approval modes and deletion confirmation consultée le 2026-09-02
- Anthropic, using Claude Cowork on Team and Enterprise plans, organisation control of Automatic mode consultée le 2026-09-02