Govern Claude Code agents with centralized authorization policies

How Cerbos governs Claude Code

Claude Code has an HTTP hooks system that sends every tool call to an external service for approval before it executes. Cerbos Synapse sits at that endpoint, evaluates the request against your authorization policies, and returns allow or deny.

The enforcement point lives outside the agent's process. The agent cannot modify the policy, skip the check, or "make assumptions" about its permissions.

Synapse's built-in extension converts Claude Code hook payloads into standard Cerbos authorization checks:

• Hook event (PreToolUse, PostToolUse) becomes the resource kind
• Tool name (Bash, Read, Write) becomes the action
• User headers become the principal (identity and roles)
• Full hook payload lands in resource attributes for fine-grained conditions

Org-wide enforcement with server-managed settings

Claude Code supports server-managed settings pushed via MDM (Jamf, Intune). These settings cannot be overridden locally, so every developer's agent is governed by the same policies. No opt-outs, no forgotten configs.

Example: protect sensitive files for all roles

apiVersion: api.cerbos.dev/v1
resourcePolicy:
  resource: PreToolUse
  version: default
  rules:
    - actions: ["Read", "Write", "Edit"]
      effect: EFFECT_DENY
      roles: ["*"]
      condition:
        match:
          any:
            of:
              - expr: R.attr.tool_input.file_path.matches(".*\\.env.*")
              - expr: R.attr.tool_input.file_path.matches(".*secret.*")
              - expr: R.attr.tool_input.file_path.matches(".*credentials.*")

Example: role-based tool access

    - actions: ["Bash"]
      effect: EFFECT_ALLOW
      roles: ["engineer"]

    - actions: ["Bash", "Write", "Edit"]
      effect: EFFECT_DENY
      roles: ["marketing"]

Start in observe mode

Deploy Synapse with no policies. Everything gets allowed, but every tool call is logged. See what your agents actually do across the org, then write policies based on real data.