enhancement(review): enforce reviewer read-only via a tool allowlist instead of bypassPermissions + prompt

[neversettle17-101]

Migrated from aoagents/ReverbCode/issues/260

Source: aoagents/ReverbCode#260
Original assignees: neversettle17-101
Original labels: enhancement

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Context

#258 / PR #259 make the reviewer run headless by launching it with --permission-mode bypassPermissions. That fixes the stall (the reviewer can now run gh/ao without a human approving each tool call), but it means the reviewer's read-only guarantee is enforced only by the prompt ("Do not push commits, edit files, or modify the branch — review only"), not by a sandbox. With bypass, the agent could technically edit files or push if the model misbehaved.

This issue tracks hardening that to an enforced read-only sandbox.

The core constraint

bypassPermissions (≡ --dangerously-skip-permissions) skips the permission system entirely, so --allowedTools/--disallowedTools have no effect under it. To make an allowlist actually bite, the reviewer must launch in a non-bypass mode where allow/deny rules are honored — while still not prompting for the tools it legitimately needs (so it stays headless).

Proposed approach

1. Add a tool-restriction field to ports.LaunchConfig (e.g. AllowedTools []string / DisallowedTools []string) and plumb it through the claude-code adapter's GetLaunchCommand to --allowedTools / --disallowedTools.
2. Launch the reviewer off bypassPermissions, with an allowlist scoped to exactly what a reviewer needs:
   • Read, Grep, Glob
   • Bash(gh:*), Bash(git diff:*), Bash(git log:*), Bash(git show:*), Bash(ao review submit:*)
   • and disallow Edit / NotebookEdit (and Bash(git push:*), Bash(git commit:*)).
3. Resolve the review.md write: the reviewer is told to write review.md then ao review submit --body review.md. A no-Write policy breaks that, so either allow a narrowly-scoped Write, or change the flow so the body is passed without writing a file.

Tradeoffs / open questions

• A tight allowlist risks the reviewer stalling if it reaches for an unlisted tool (e.g. a cat/ls/rg via Bash during exploration). The allowlist needs to be permissive enough for normal review work but tight enough to block writes — needs tuning/testing.
• Confirm current Claude Code semantics for headless TUI panes: which mode honors allow/deny lists without prompting on allowlisted tools, and how unlisted tools behave (deny vs prompt).
• Make the restriction reviewer-specific so worker sessions are unaffected.

Related

• #258 — reviewer flow fixes (introduces bypassPermissions)
• PR #259 — the fix PR