DontAsk & BypassPermissions: Automation

These modes are for advanced automation and CI/CD pipelines where a human is not present.

DontAsk Mode

Behavior: All tools that would normally prompt are automatically denied.

• Requirement: You must pre-approve tools via permissions.allow rules.
• Use Case: Headless CI runs where you only want specific tasks (like npm test) to execute.

BypassPermissions Mode

Behavior: Skips all safety checks and prompts. Everything runs immediately.

• Protected Paths: As of v2.1.126, even protected paths are skipped.
• Catastrophic Protection: Only rm -rf / and rm -rf ~ still prompt.
• DANGER: Never use this on your primary dev machine. Only use it in isolated containers or VMs.

Access

These modes cannot be toggled via Shift+Tab by default. You must start Claude Code with a flag:

claude --permission-mode dontAsk
claude --permission-mode bypassPermissions