Write your team policy around actions that require approval, then assess Cursor's run modes against those boundaries. Do not treat Auto-review, Allowlist and Run Everything as interchangeable safeguards.
State what the documentation establishes
Cursor documents Run Modes as governing how agent tool calls run and when approval is requested. Auto-review, Allowlist and Run Everything differ in approval, sandboxing and classifier behaviour.
The supplied evidence does not establish every mode's exact treatment of every action. Consequently, this article does not rank their protection or prescribe a mode for production work. The policy below is editorial guidance for defining requirements before checking the relevant documented behaviour.
Define an action-based policy
List the action families your team expects to encounter, including shell, MCP and Fetch actions where applicable. For each family, record the intended environment, permitted purpose, required approver and prohibited destination or effect.
Distinguish reading synthetic project files from changing dependencies, reaching external destinations or affecting shared infrastructure. These are proposed policy distinctions, not claims that a particular mode enforces them automatically.
Give each of Auto-review, Allowlist and Run Everything its own assessment entry. Record the behaviour verified from documentation, the team's acceptable scope and any unanswered questions. Never copy one mode's assessment into another merely because both enable agent work.
Use a bounded exception form
A practical exception form should contain:
- Requester, reviewer and task identifier.
- Requested mode and reason the normal policy is insufficient.
- Exact repository scope and allowed action families.
- Data classification, using synthetic or authorised non-private material only.
- Start time, expiry time and named observer.
- Expected evidence, stop conditions and return-to-policy owner.
In a hypothetical Bengaluru team, a developer requests a 45-minute exception to investigate a failing build in a disposable repository containing fabricated examples. The reviewer should assess the exact proposed commands and destinations, not approve “anything needed”.
Evaluate the exception by whether another reviewer can determine its boundaries without asking the requester. Missing expiry or undefined external access means the request needs revision.
Review autonomy after meaningful changes
As an editorial cadence, review the policy monthly and after a mode change, integration change or unexpected tool action. Record what changed, whether an exception expired and whether the original approval assumptions still hold.
Stop agent work when an action exceeds the approved boundary or mode behaviour remains unverified. Next, narrow the task or obtain a fresh, bounded decision.
When budgeting access, use the AI tools catalog to check access format and save terms before buying. Marketplace account, code or token offers are not proof of official subscription equivalence or team-policy enforcement.
Sources and scope
Source material checked 29 October 2026; features/policies may change. Cursor Run Modes establishes mode-dependent approval, sandboxing and classifier differences. The policy structure, exception form and review cadence are editorial advice.