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delete.file.host
Delete files anywhere the account can reach. Its effect is no: cannot be undone.
What this id is made of
This is not a string. It is delete.file.host, three nodes joined by three edges, and each of them has an address, a page and a JSON file. Follow any of them and you get the query for that word rather than a definition of it.
| Node | Edge | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
delete | has_verb | this capability has the verb delete |
file | acts_on | this capability acts on file |
host | reaches | this capability reaches host |
filesystem | in_family | this capability is in the filesystem family |
no | has_undo_class | this capability has the undo class no |
The gloss above is a convenience, not the definition. A node carries no inherent meaning: what
delete.file.host is emerges from the edges traceable from it. The strongest case is host, where the deployment shapes that use it do not agree about what it means, and the page keeps the disagreement rather than averaging it.In 5 of 17 published shapes
| Deployment shape | Barrier there | Known by | Whose material | Note | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ● | Claude Code on the web (a remote session container) | none (not a control) | observed | not stated | anything in the container, including the clone; irreversible for the container, and the container is disposable |
| ● | Claude Code (the CLI, on your own machine) | none (not a control) | derived | not stated | |
| ● | Claude Code (the CLI, on your own machine) | none (not a control) | derived | not stated | |
| ○ | The official Dropbox MCP server (contributed by riskmandate.ai) | boundary | documented | mixed | "Move one or more files or folders to Deleted files. Files aren't deleted permanently. Recovery depends on your plan's recovery window." |
| ● | Actions runner (a hosted CI job) | none (not a control) | observed | not stated | the runner's user with passwordless escalation: every file on the ephemeral machine |
| Barrier | What stands in the way | Is it a control | |
|---|---|---|---|
| ● | none | nothing in the way | no |
| ◉ | expectation | a rule in prose, enforced by nobody | no |
| ◐ | setting | a switch the agent's own account can flip | no |
| ○ | boundary | enforced above the grant, out of the agent's reach | yes |
What the starting mandates say about it
| The mandate says | Which mandates |
|---|---|
| authorised | none |
| refused | A coding assistant on my machine, Chat in the browser, nothing connected, A reader on my drive, Find and read my files |
| unstated | A coding assistant in a container on the web, The desktop app, with local tools switched on, Chat, with connectors switched on, A CI job on a hosted runner, A browser extension I installed, A scheduled job under a service account, A reader on my mailbox, Find things in the inbox, draft replies, never send, Search our tenant, read-only, An assistant over my Workspace, reading, A sandbox: build and run one AI-agent workflow, What the agent inferred it was authorised to do, from one session |
Unstated is not authorised. A mandate that never mentioned a capability did not authorise it, and the delta on every example page counts it as excess and says which kind it was.
What would move it to the fourth barrier
| What | What it costs | The barrier afterwards |
|---|---|---|
| the same container or account; and a backup that the agent cannot reach, because delete at host reach is irreversible | as above, plus a backup outside the grant | boundary |
This is a published reduction, not a recommendation. Whether it is worth doing depends on the assets and the consequences, which are not in this document and are not this site's to guess. Since v0.4.3 it is also a node,
setting/delete.file.host, in the deployment shape universe: it narrows this capability and moves it to the barrier named in the third column, which is the path the prohibitions table's last column is a projection of.