> I don't want to give it "dangerous" access to my entire mac

I'm running Claude/Codex inside native macOS sandbox, configured with a simple script - https://github.com/sheremetyev/sandfence

always in "bypass permissions" mode - it works until task is solved, sometime 1 hour or more (which includes running tests etc)

recommend converting to https://github.com/apple/container

Linux VM doesn't run native macOS toolchain and requires copying files back and forth

If you don't want to do that, don't use a VM. I like nono:

https://github.com/always-further/nono

I am skeptical there are many real use cases that require native macOS not arbitrary unix. For files, use a readonly mount https://github.com/apple/container/blob/main/docs/how-to.md#... (ie. /path:ro)