Handlers

Handlers are rippy’s per-CLI safety experts. Where the built-in allowlist treats a command as “safe in all forms”, a handler inspects the actual subcommand, flags, and arguments and decides whether the specific invocation is safe. This is how rippy can auto-approve git status while still asking about git push --force.

Handler families

rippy ships with handlers for 100+ commands grouped by domain:

Family	Handlers include
Version control	git, gh (GitHub CLI)
Containers & orchestration	docker, kubectl, helm, ansible
Cloud	aws, gcloud, az, doctl (via cloud.rs)
Languages & package managers	cargo, npm, pnpm, yarn, python, uv, pip, poetry, node, ruby, gem, bundler, perl
Databases	psql, mysql, sqlite3, redis-cli, mongo
Networking	curl, wget, ssh, scp, rsync, nc, ping
Filesystem	cd, mkdir, find, rm, mv, cp, ln, touch
Shell & scripting	bash, sh, zsh, env, xargs
Text processing	sed, awk, grep, jq, yq, tr, cut

Each handler understands the subcommand grammar of its tool. For example, the git handler auto-approves read-only subcommands (status, log, diff, branch, show, …) but asks about anything that modifies refs, rewrites history, or pushes.

How handlers compose with rules

When a command arrives, rippy evaluates in this order:

1. Explicit .rippy.toml rules — your config has the final say.
2. Claude Code permissions.* rules — imported from ~/.claude/settings.json.
3. Safe allowlist — the ~130 read-only tools that are always fine.
4. Handler verdict — the per-CLI handler for the specific command.
5. Default — whatever you set via default in the [settings] block of your config (usually ask).

The first layer that produces a decision wins. That means you can always override a handler with an explicit rule — an action = "deny" rule matching git push in your .rippy.toml blocks every git push, even the variants the handler considers “needs approval” but not “deny”.

Where to find them in the source

Handlers live in src/handlers/ as one Rust file per family (git.rs, docker.rs, kubectl.rs is in system.rs, and so on). The coverage grows with each release — if your favorite tool is missing a handler, open an issue or a PR.