[BUG] Team agents stuck on "Permission request sent to team leader" — leader never receives request

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing issues and this hasn't been reported yet
• [x] This is a single bug report (please file separate reports for different bugs)
• [x] I am using the latest version of Claude Code

What's Wrong?

When spawning team agents via Agent tool with team_name and mode: "bypassPermissions", the agents become stuck displaying:

Permission request sent to team "expo-build" leader

The team leader never receives these permission requests as messages or any actionable notification. The agents remain indefinitely blocked, unable to execute any tool calls (Read, Write, Bash, etc.). The only workaround is manually interrupting each agent in its tmux pane so it resumes.

This happens even though:

• mode: "bypassPermissions" is explicitly set on the Agent call
• planModeRequired: false is confirmed in the team config
• The leader sends messages telling agents they have full permissions (has no effect)
• Broadcasting to all teammates has no effect

What Should Happen?

1. mode: "bypassPermissions" should grant teammates full tool access without requiring leader approval
2. If permission requests ARE sent to the leader, they should be surfaced as actionable messages the leader can respond to (currently they are silently dropped)

Error Messages/Logs

No error messages — the agents silently block with the "Permission request sent to team leader" status message visible in their tmux pane. The leader's conversation shows no incoming permission requests.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create a team:

``
TeamCreate → team_name: "expo-build", description: "..."
``

1. Spawn a teammate with bypassPermissions:

``
Agent → {
name: "worker",
subagent_type: "fullstack-developer",
mode: "bypassPermissions",
team_name: "expo-build",
prompt: "Read AGENTS.md and create lib/analyzer.ts ..."
}
``

1. The agent spawns in a tmux pane and begins processing
2. When the agent attempts its first tool call (e.g., Read, Skill, or Bash), it displays "Permission request sent to team leader" and blocks
3. The team leader receives an idle notification but no permission request
4. The agent remains stuck until manually interrupted in its tmux pane

Workaround: Manually switch to the agent's tmux pane and interrupt it (Ctrl+C or Escape), which causes it to retry and sometimes proceed. In our session, all 4 agents required manual intervention.

Claude Model

Opus

Is this a regression?

I don't know

Claude Code Version

2.1.71 (Claude Code)

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

macOS

Terminal/Shell

Other

Additional Information

Team config at time of bug

The team config (~/.claude/teams/expo-build/config.json) showed all agents with planModeRequired: false and isActive: true. The leader had model: "claude-opus-4-6" while agents had model: "inherit" (separate known issue #31069).

Session context

• 4 agents spawned simultaneously for parallel work on independent file sets
• All 4 agents exhibited the same blocking behavior
• After manual intervention in tmux panes, agents successfully executed all tool calls
• The permission blocking appears to happen on the FIRST tool call attempt after spawn

Related issues

• #31069 — Team agents fail to resolve 'inherit' model (separate bug, also present in same session)
• #24307 — Delegate Mode strips teammate tools (different root cause but similar symptom)

🤖 Generated with Claude Code