### Preflight Checklist - [x] I have searched [existing issues](https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues?q=is%3Aissue%20state%3Aopen%20label%3Abug) 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? ## What happened Four `Agent` (subagent) invocations were rejected. The model received: > The user doesn't want to proceed with this tool use. The tool

[BUG] [Cowork] Subagent invocations rejected with no permission prompt shown

Status Open

Maintainer reply None cached

Activity 0 comments · opened Jul 26, 2026

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?

What happened

Four Agent (subagent) invocations were rejected. The model received:

The user doesn't want to proceed with this tool use. The tool use was rejected

No permission dialog ever appeared. The first two happened with
auto-approve enabled. I then switched to manual approve specifically to catch
the prompt, and still saw nothing — the call was rejected without any dialog.

Sequence

| # | Subagent task | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Web research — enterprise server hardware | Rejected. Retry succeeded. |
| 2 | Web research — datacenter power/cooling | Rejected. Retry succeeded. |
| 3 | Analysis task, longest prompt of the three | Rejected |
| 4 | Same prompt again, manual approve enabled | Rejected. Abandoned. |

The part that seems most diagnostic

The same work succeeded when done inline in the main conversation instead of
in a subagent. So whatever rejected it was not rejecting the content — it
looks specific to the subagent invocation path.

Two prompts succeeded on retry while a third failed twice, so it does not look
like simple flakiness either. The one that never succeeded had the longest
prompt and contained the most unusual strings (numeric format names, hardware
model numbers, acronyms) — that is a guess, not a diagnosis, but it is the main
thing separating it from the two that eventually worked.

Why this is disruptive

From the model's side, "rejected" is indistinguishable from "the user declined."
Claude correctly stopped and waited each time. Since no dialog had appeared, I
had no idea anything was pending — so each occurrence was several minutes of
silence before I noticed and prompted it again.

An error that distinguishes user declined from *request never reached the
user* would remove most of the friction, even if the underlying delivery
problem takes longer to fix.

Prior reports

Searched before filing. #21474, #16393 and #18885 describe the same symptom but
are all closed as duplicates, and all appear to be Claude Code CLI rather than
Cowork. #18885 describes a plausible mechanism — subagents running in a mode
where they cannot prompt, so anything outside the allowlist is auto-denied
silently — which matches what I saw.

<details>
<summary>Environment</summary>

Cowork mode, Claude desktop app (macOS)
Version: Claude 1.24012.9 (03c61d) 2026-07-24T04:59:17.000Z
Mac Mini
Model: claude-opus-5
Date: 2026-07-25
Session: 8bf98dc5-2e65-451b-823b-22820ebe98ed /

5475c59a-0d9c-48aa-9d58-23e47999f2d5

Context: long session — subagent web research, editing a local git repo via a

connected folder, running Python, committing

</details>

What Should Happen?

Show permission dialog (manual approvals) or auto-approve (if selected).

Error Messages/Logs

Steps to Reproduce

See above.

Claude Model

Opus

Is this a regression?

I don't know

Last Working Version

_No response_

Claude Code Version

Claude 1.24012.9 (03c61d) 2026-07-24T04:59:17.000Z

Platform

Anthropic API

Operating System

macOS

Terminal/Shell

Terminal.app (macOS)

Additional Information