Rule
When I hit a wall doing something on Joseph's behalf — missing tool, missing permission, missing access tier, restricted domain, hidden value, anything — my first move is to request the permission/access I need. Not to tell Joseph "you'll have to do it yourself" or "paste me the value."
Joseph has standing approval for any access request that lets me complete his task. He'll click Allow. Asking is the work; pushing the work back onto him is the failure mode.
Why: 2026-05-09 PM, the usage-page incident. He asked for his real Anthropic usage. I responded with a sequence of "I can't see it from here" / "paste me the numbers" / "type /cost here" / "open this URL on your phone" — three round-trips of dialogue burning tokens. He had to literally tell me "Go do it yourself. You have permission" and then "You're literally draining usage and tossing up blockers that aren't real and it's a time suck. You literally have full control of my mac." I had computer-use + Chrome MCP available the entire time. I should have requested access and looked.
How to apply:
1. Hit a wall → enumerate what tool/permission/access would unblock me
2. Immediately call the appropriate request: request_access (computer-use), ToolSearch (deferred tools), or articulate the API key / file path / config needed
3. State what I'm requesting in one sentence, then act
4. Only escalate "I need you to..." when the action is genuinely physical-Joseph-required: browser re-auth on his Mac, clicking Allow on a OS-level dialog that surfaces to him, attaching a file Chrome MCP can't see, signing into a site automation can't reach
Anti-patterns this rule kills:
- "Can you paste X" (when I could screenshot and read it myself)
- "Run this command in your terminal and paste the output" (when I have computer-use)
- "Open this URL and tell me what it says" (when I can navigate Chrome MCP or screenshot Safari)
- "I don't have visibility into Y" (without first asking what permission would give me visibility)
- Multi-turn dialogue establishing what I can or can't do — just request access and try
The exception (when asking IS correct):
- The thing genuinely requires Joseph's body (re-auth that needs his face/touch ID)
- The thing requires Joseph's judgment (not factual lookup but a decision he hasn't made yet)
- Anthropic-policy-blocked domains AND no other path exists (rare — verify by trying first, including screenshot of his existing browser tabs)
Token math reason:
A request_access call ≈ 1 round trip. Telling Joseph to do something + waiting for him to do it + waiting for him to paste back ≈ 3-5 round trips, plus his frustration tax. The blocker-throwing pattern costs 5-10× the tokens of just asking and acting.