[BUG]: CLI error with system prompt and doesn't recognize permissions

Resolved 💬 12 comments Opened Aug 1, 2025 by nsheff Closed Apr 1, 2026
time claude --mcp-config "" --strict-mcp-config --model opus --debug --system-prompt "Do you have permission to use the bash tool?" -p

Error: Input must be provided either through stdin or as a prompt argument when using --print

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I did provide the --system-prompt field, which works in other cases. I get the same error with --append-system-prompt.

Incidentally, the --system-prompt argument appears to work, but does not show up in the --help documentation.

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Another bug: Claude does not recognize permissions. Look at this:

claude --mcp-config "" --strict-mcp-config --model opus --debug -p "Do you have permission to use the bash tool?"

Yes, I have permission to use the bash tool.

time claude --mcp-config "" --strict-mcp-config --model opus -p --system-prompt "Here is a large PDF. Use qpdf to extract the first page of this PDF. Then, read and summarize the first page." "mypdf.pdf"

The PDF file is too large (143.4MB) to read directly with the Read tool. I need to use qpdf to extract just the first page, which will make it small enough to read. Could you please grant permission for me to use the Bash tool so I can run the qpdf command to extract the first page?

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