The most interesting consent design in software right now

Approval gates are usually built one action at a time: the agent wants to run a command, you say yes, it wants to edit a file, you say yes again. Claude Code ships that too. But the interesting gate is one level up: Plan Mode, where nothing executes until you've approved the plan as a unit.

This changes what you're consenting to. Per-action approval asks "is this command safe?" — a question you'll answer reflexively by the fortieth prompt. Plan approval asks "is this the right shape of work?" — a question worth a human's attention exactly once per task.

The scope object is the other quiet innovation. "Allow once / allow always / per-session rules" makes authorization a first-class, editable thing rather than a moment that evaporates. You can inspect what you've granted. Compare Codex, which reaches the same goals through modes — read-only, auto, full access — set globally rather than accumulated per rule.

Two vendors, same problem, opposite grain: Claude Code scopes consent per plan and per rule; Codex scopes it per mode and per command. The pattern page tracks both, part by part.