Capability Prompts - Vibe

How capability prompts work

Before an app runs for the first time, Vibe shows the user a single prompt listing all capabilities the app requests. The user can:

Accept all — all capabilities are granted
Reject individual capabilities — the corresponding features are disabled
Cancel — the app does not open

Decisions are saved per project instance. The user can change them later in project settings.

Capabilities

Capability	Triggered by	Prompt text
Network access	`security.network: true`	”This app requests outbound internet access”
Host file import	`security.allowHostFileImport: true`	”This app can import files from your Mac”
Port exposure	Any service with `ports[].hostExposure: auto`	”This app will listen on a local network port”
Large disk usage	State size exceeds threshold	”This app may use significant disk space”
Background execution	(future — deferred in v1)	“This app requests running when the window is closed”

Effect of rejected capabilities

Capability	Effect of rejection
Network access	All outbound traffic from containers is blocked
Host file import	File import UI is disabled
Port exposure	Ports with `hostExposure: auto` are not exposed on the host

Inter-service traffic within the app is always allowed regardless of the network capability decision.

Per-instance decisions

Decisions are scoped to the project instance — not the app ID. Two instances of the same .vibeapp opened at different times have independent capability decisions. This means:

Duplicating a project instance does not inherit capability decisions
Opening the same .vibeapp a second time creates a new instance with its own prompt

Changing decisions

Capability decisions can be reviewed and changed in the project’s settings panel within the Vibe macOS app at any time after first open.