TL;DR If Claude Code asks you to trust the folder every time you open it, look at the path in the prompt: if it's your home directory, that answer is never saved.
cdinto the project before you typeclaudeand it asks once. Don't set the home entry totrueby hand: that trusts every folder under it.
Claude Code keeps workspace trust per directory, and it never saves it for your home directory. When you accept the prompt in a project, it writes hasTrustDialogAccepted: true for that path in ~/.claude.json and doesn't ask again. When you accept it in ~, it holds the answer for that session only, so the next launch starts from zero. The docs say it plainly: there is no setting to persist it. It isn't a bug, and hunting for an option won't fix it.
It hits hardest where every new terminal opens in home: a fresh tab on macOS or Linux, PowerShell on Windows. You type claude without a cd first, and the question is back.
The prompt that comes back
This is what Claude Code v2.1.312 shows when you start it in a home directory with no saved answer, captured in a scratch home (/home/dev) with empty settings:
Accessing workspace:
/home/dev
Quick safety check: Is this a project you created or one you trust? (Like your own code, a
well-known open source project, or work from your team). If not, take a moment to review what's in
this folder first.
Claude Code'll be able to read, edit, and execute files here.
Security guide
❯ No, exit
Yes, I trust this folder
Enter to confirm · Esc to cancel
The option already selected is No, exit. Accept it in home, quit, and start again: the same screen, word for word.
What gets saved, and for which folder
After accepting the prompt once in home and once in a git repository at ~/code/api, this is what ~/.claude.json holds:
jq '.projects | map_values(.hasTrustDialogAccepted)' ~/.claude.json
{
"/home/dev": false,
"/home/dev/code/api": true
}
Home stays at false even though you said yes. The rest depends on where you start, tested on v2.1.312:
Where you start claude |
How often it asks | What it saves |
|---|---|---|
| Your home directory | Every launch | Nothing, the entry stays false |
Any folder inside a git repository, src/ included |
Once | The repository root, so the whole repo is covered |
| A plain folder outside any repository | Once | That folder, and its subfolders stop asking |
| A git repository inside a folder you already trusted | Once more, for that repo | That repository's root |
claude -p |
Never | Nothing, and the project's allow rules stay ignored |
Starting in src/ and saving the root is what you want: a repo trusted once stays trusted wherever you open it. The last row is why a project's .claude/settings.json rules seem not to work in a script, which the tip on permission prompts for chained commands covers.
How to stop answering it
1. Start Claude Code from the project folder
cd ~/code/api
claude
The first time it asks; from then on it doesn't, in that repo or any of its subfolders.
2. Make your terminal open where you work
If you always land in home, change the starting folder instead of the habit. In Windows Terminal, the profile setting is startingDirectory. In VS Code, the integrated terminal already opens in the workspace folder, so running claude there never hits the home case.
3. Trust a parent folder only if nothing unknown lives under it
Trusting a plain folder such as ~/code covers its subfolders that aren't repositories. Each repository inside still asks once, because a nested repo always needs its own answer.
4. Don't set home to true by hand
The docs show how to trust a folder by hand, projects["<path>"].hasTrustDialogAccepted in ~/.claude.json, for cases like claude -p. Done for home, it works on v2.1.312: the prompt disappears. But it also stopped asking in ~/other, a new folder with no answer of its own. Every folder under home that isn't a repository inherits that trust, an unzipped download included, and a parent folder's trust is enough for its hooks and env block to run. The repeated prompt is the price of not trusting everything you own at once.
5. If a project folder asks again, update
If the path in the prompt isn't home and you already accepted it, the saved answer was lost. Older versions lost it in three ways, fixed in the changelog:
- v2.1.259: sessions running at the same time reverted each other's
~/.claude.json, so trust reset. - v2.1.284: started in home, the prompt appeared a second time after switching renderers or updating.
- v2.1.299: on Linux, a sandboxed command that left an empty
.config.jsonmade sign-in, MCP servers and trust look lost.
Check your version with claude --version and run claude update. Then run the jq above to confirm the project path now holds true.
Official docs: Security: trust verification
