Installation

Get agento-patronum running in under a minute. Two commands, one restart — your credentials are shielded.

Install in two commands

Run these inside Claude Code:

# Step 1 — add marketplace (once per machine)
/plugin marketplace add emaarco/agento-patronum

# Step 2 — install plugin
/plugin install agento-patronum@emaarco

That's it. Hook active. Credentials shielded.

Restart required

Claude Code doesn't have a PostInstall lifecycle event yet — that would be the natural solution here, and may be added in a future version. For now, agento-patronum uses a SessionStart hook that runs setup on the first session start after installation. Restart Claude Code once after installing to activate protection.

Installation scopes

Claude Code plugins can be installed at three scopes — all three can be active at once, their configs are merged.

Scope	Protected	Fires in	Committed	Config
user	You	Every repo on this machine	No	~/.claude/patronum/patronum.json
project	Everyone on the team	This repo only	Yes — shared with contributors	.claude/patronum/patronum.json
local	You	This repo only	No — gitignored	.claude/patronum/patronum.local.json

Subagents only see user-scope plugins

Claude Code subagents run as independent processes that only inherit user-scope settings (~/.claude/settings.json). Plugins installed at project or local scope alone do not protect subagent tool calls. Install at user scope to ensure all agents are covered. See Security Considerations for details.

Which scope should I use?

Always install at user scope. This is the foundation — hooks fire everywhere, including subagents, and your personal credentials (SSH keys, AWS credentials) are protected across all repos.

Team setup — add project scope on top. .claude/settings.json is committed so every contributor gets the plugin automatically, and the shared .claude/patronum/patronum.json ensures everyone enforces the same rules. Contributors should still install at user scope individually for subagent protection.

Per-repo overrides — add local scope on top for personal patterns in a specific repo (gitignored).

Repo configs are auto-created

On the first SessionStart after install, patronum-setup.js creates the right config file if it doesn't exist yet. Add these to your .gitignore:

.claude/patronum/patronum.local.json
.claude/patronum/patronum.log

Config merging

All present configs are loaded simultaneously — rules are merged, not replaced:

Config file	Scope	Always loaded?
~/.claude/patronum/patronum.json	user	✅ Yes
.claude/patronum/patronum.json	project	When committed to the repo
.claude/patronum/patronum.local.json	local	When present (gitignored)

Your personal credential protections (~/.ssh/, ~/.aws/) can never be overridden by a project config. /patronum-list shows each config separately.

Verify installation

After restarting Claude Code, run:

/patronum-verify

This runs a self-test that confirms the hook is blocking protected files and allowing safe ones. You can also open /plugin → Installed tab for a quick visual check.

Uninstall

See Managing agento-patronum for scope-specific uninstall, suspend/resume, and full data removal.