pix-gate

Pi extension — permission gate for dangerous bash commands.

What it does

Intercepts every tool call and classifies it against severity rules before it runs. Two rule sets:

Path rules — protect read/write/edit/grep/find/ls (and paths inside shell commands) from private keys, credential files, etc.

| Tier | Behavior | |---|---| | block | deny-first, 15s timeout | | warn | allow-first, 30s | | info | blue notify, never blocks |

Command rules — gate shell invocations (bash, powershell, proc).

| Tier | Examples | Behavior | |---|---|---| | critical | force-push to main, recursive delete, dd to disk | hard-block (non-interactive) / 15s auto-deny dialog (TUI) | | dangerous | destructive git, chmod 777, curl … \| sh | 30s auto-deny confirmation | | risky | — | 60s allow-first dialog; silently passes non-interactive |

Privileged auth redirect — bash sudo/ssh can't have their password/passphrase auto-typed, so they are hard-blocked and redirected to the dedicated tool (sudo_run/ssh_run) with no bypass, but only when that tool is installed (pix-sudo/pix-ssh are opt-in; without them the bash form is the only path and passes through). This is guarding (stop + redirect); the softer steering of non-privileged stand-ins (cat→read, grep→grep, …) lives in pix-nudge.

Auto-approve patterns and extra rules go in the gate section of ~/.pi/agent/pix.json; set guardrails: "off" to disable built-in rules entirely.

Away notifications — while a dialog is open, the gate holds the shared agent-state coordinator blocked (via withAgentBlock from @xynogen/pix-runtime), so pix-notify can alert an away user. Pairs with pix-commands unattended modes:

• /afk — yellow gates auto-allow, red/root auto-deny, so only stops requiring attention surface.
• /yolo — every tier including red auto-approves (capable models only).

Bare sudo in bash is always redirected to sudo_run, regardless of mode.

Circuit breaker. A small set of catastrophic, unrecoverable commands (rm -rf / or ~, dd/redirect onto a raw disk, mkfs on a device, a fork bomb) can never be auto-approved by any mode, including YOLO. They always fall through to the interactive dialog (or a no-UI block). This mirrors Claude Code's bypassPermissions floor, which still prompts on root/home wipes.

Project trust. Replaces Pi's five-choice project-trust prompt with two remembered choices: Trust and Do not trust. Saved decisions, a defaultProjectTrust other than ask, and no-UI runs fall through to Pi unchanged.

Reusable exports

The gate is split into a pure rule engine and the interactive prompt, so the classification logic can be reused without the TUI:

• @xynogen/pix-gate/lib — pure rules: DEFAULT_RULES, buildRules, classify, loadUserConfig, isSudoCommand. No Pi/TUI dependency.
• @xynogen/pix-gate/prompt — promptGateDecision(), the confirm/deny dialog (depends on pi-tui). This is now a thin adapter over the shared @xynogen/pix-pretty/gate-overlay component, so the gate and sudo_run dialogs share one implementation.

pix-skills imports ./lib to gate skill !`cmd` directives with the same rules as the bash tool (auto-deny on match, no prompt).

Configuration

Gate rules are read from the gate section of ~/.pi/agent/pix.json (the unified config file). The legacy ~/.pi/agent/pix-gate.json file is no longer used.

~/.pi/agent/pix.json — gate section:

{
  "gate": {
    "guardrails": "on",
    "extraRules": [
      { "pattern": "rm -rf /my-dir", "severity": "critical", "reason": "Deletes project root" }
    ],
    "autoApprove": ["^echo "]
  }
}

The schema is identical to the old pix-gate.json — move your existing config into pix.json under the gate key.

Install

pi install npm:@xynogen/pix-gate

Bundled in @xynogen/pix-core. Install it alone only if you do not use pix-core.

Full distro

This package is part of Pix. The installer sets up Pi and the full distro. See Install for the notes for each OS.

# Linux / macOS
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xynogen/pix-mono/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

# Windows
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xynogen/pix-mono/main/scripts/install.ps1 | iex

License

MIT