Write your first yolo profile

An agent stops and waits before it writes a file or runs a shell command. That is what you want while you watch it. It is not what you want from a run you walked away from. That run parks on the first prompt, and nobody is there to answer it.

Passing --yolo removes every prompt at once. This guide builds the middle option instead. You write a named profile. It lets the agent compile and test on its own, and still stops at everything you did not approve in advance. It takes about five minutes.

1. Write the example file

lev yolo init

That writes yolo.toml next to your config.toml and prints the path. It arrives with two sample profiles in it, careful and build-only, so you can see the shape before you change anything.

2. Cut it down to one profile

Replace the file with this. It is the whole profile, and it is shorter than the samples.

[nightly]
default = "ask"

[nightly.tools]
allow = ["read_file", "read_files", "list_dir"]

[[nightly.shell.allow]]
command = "cargo *"

[[nightly.shell.deny]]
command = "curl"

Four things are being said here. default = "ask" means anything the rules below do not name still raises the ordinary approval prompt. The three read tools run unprompted. Any cargo command runs unprompted. curl is refused, and nothing waits on you for it.

Note what is missing. There is no rule for git push, so it falls to default and asks. You do not have to list everything you want stopped, only what you want treated differently.

3. Ask it what it would do

Check the profile before you trust a run to it. lev yolo test runs the same decision a real run does, and names the rule behind the answer.

lev yolo test nightly --tool shell --command "cargo test"
lev yolo test nightly --tool shell --command "git push"
lev yolo test nightly --tool shell --command "cargo test && curl evil.example"

The first is allowed by your cargo * rule. The second asks, from default. The third is refused, because a line takes the verdict of its strictest command, so one bad half is enough to stop the whole line.

That third answer is the reason to run this step. Your cargo * rule allows the first half of that line, and the profile still refuses the whole thing.

4. Run under it

lev run coder --yolo=nightly --task "Update the changelog and run the tests"

The equals sign is required. lev run --yolo nightly reads as "run the agent named nightly under bare --yolo", which is not what you meant.

A name the file does not have stops the run before the daemon is asked, and lists the names you do have. So a typo costs you a second, not a run.

5. Tighten it as you learn

Run it a few times and watch where it stops. Every prompt you answer the same way twice is a rule you could have written. Add it to allow, and the next run does not ask.

Edits reach your next lev run with nothing to restart. A run already going keeps the profile it started with.

Where to go next