Tuning scoring thresholds

When and how to move auto_allow_threshold and auto_deny_threshold.

The most common knobs you'll touch in grith are proxy.auto_allow_threshold and proxy.auto_deny_threshold. Defaults are 3.0 and 8.0. This page walks through when to move them and how to verify the change is doing what you want.

Symptoms

Symptom	Likely cause	Knob
Digest is constantly full of trivial-looking quarantines	`auto_allow_threshold` too low	raise to 3.5 or 4.0
Things you'd want to review are auto-allowing	`auto_allow_threshold` too high	lower to 2.5 or 2.0
Calls auto-denying that you'd have approved	`auto_deny_threshold` too low	raise to 9.0 or 10.0
Definitively-bad calls landing in the queue instead of denying	`auto_deny_threshold` too high	lower to 7.0 or 6.5

Measure before you move

Don't tune blind. Look at the audit log:

grith audit --limit 200 | grep queue | head

Open a few sample items:

grith digest show <id>

If the filter contributions look reasonable for "yes, this needs review", the threshold is right. If they look like routine work that shouldn't have queued, the threshold is too tight (or your profile is missing routine entries — that's often the better fix).

Make the change

grith config set proxy.auto_allow_threshold 3.5

Or edit ~/.config/grith/config.toml:

[proxy]
auto_allow_threshold = 3.5
auto_deny_threshold  = 8.0

The change applies to the next call. No restart needed.

Re-measure

Run for a day or two. Then:

grith audit --limit 500 | awk '{print $5}' | sort | uniq -c

Look at the decision distribution. A well-tuned setup has roughly:

85–95% auto-allow.
5–10% queue.
1–5% auto-deny.

If the queue ratio is over 15%, raise auto_allow_threshold. If under 2%, consider lowering it.

When profile is the better fix

If the digest is full of the same shape of call over and over — e.g. "reading ~/.config/claude-code/auth.json" — that's not a threshold problem. That's a missing routine_paths entry in your profile. Fix the profile, not the threshold.

The threshold is a global knob. Tightening it to silence one chatty pattern makes everything else less safe.

Per-session thresholds (Pro)

A Pro plan can attach per-session policy bundles that override thresholds for specific session profiles (e.g. tighter for production, looser for sandbox exploration). See Centralised policies.