The coupling gate treated every path under .claude/ as mechanism, so editing the
pre-approved command list demanded an explanation of a machine that had not
changed. HARNESS.md already calls settings.json a convenience — if its schema
changed the harness would still work, you would just get more prompts — so the
gate now exempts that one file and nothing else.
Carries the settings.json edit that exposed it.
bdeshi
28face98d6