Auto-mode permission classifier blocks authorized actions and is intermittently unavailable
Status Open
Maintainer reply None cached
Workaround ✓ Mentioned in description ↑
Activity 0 comments · opened Aug 13, 2026
What happened
During a normal working session the auto-mode permission classifier produced two distinct failures that made it impossible to complete authorized actions:
1. Denies an action the user explicitly authorized, with no smooth approval path.
- I asked the assistant to
gh pr merge <n> --merge. - The call returned:
Permission for this action was denied by the Claude Code auto mode classifier. Reason: Blocked by classifier. - The user then re-authorized explicitly in chat ("and merge it", "JUST RUN IT, I ALREADY AUTHORIZED"). Subsequent attempts came back as
The tool use was rejected. - Net effect: an action the user clearly wanted could not be run through the assistant at all. The only workaround was the user typing the command themselves via the
!prefix.
2. Intermittently unavailable (fails open to "can't run anything").
- Earlier in the same session, unrelated read/tool calls (an MCP
whoami, an MCP write) returned:
claude-sonnet-5[1m] is temporarily unavailable, so auto mode cannot determine the safety of <tool> right now. Wait briefly and then try this action again.
- This blocked several consecutive attempts over a period of minutes, stalling the session even for benign calls.
Expected
- When the user has explicitly and repeatedly authorized an action in the conversation, the assistant should be able to proceed (or there should be a one-tap approve, not a hard loop of rejections).
- Classifier unavailability should not hard-block tool calls with no fallback; a transient outage of the safety classifier shouldn't halt the whole session.
Impact
A one-line gh pr merge took many minutes and ultimately could not be performed by the assistant despite clear, repeated user authorization. Same pattern would block any gated Bash/MCP action whenever the classifier denies or is unavailable.
Environment
- Claude Code CLI (Bash + MCP tools), auto permission mode.
- Actions involved:
gh pr merge, MCP tool calls (Figma MCP, whoami).